The Emerging Missional Church is Greenwich Village – More Thoughts on Fracturing

Sorry for the slightly pretentious if not strange title of this article, but I wanted to add some further thoughts to my article The Emerging Missional Church Fractures into Mini-Movements by making some comparisons between the cultural symbolism of Greenwich Village and the Emerging Missional Church.

New York’s Greenwich Village has for decades carried a tremendous amount of symbolism in the popular imagination. The neighbourhood’s bohemian flavour can be traced back to the beginning of the 20th century when artists, dancers, poets and actors were drawn to the accessible art-friendly spaces of the area. As the decades passed various artistic, cultural and intellectual movements found a home in the area. In the 1920′s it could be radical playwrights, in the 1930′s it could be Dadaists and Surrealists, the 40′s were about the Abstract Expressionists, the 50′s saw the beat writers such as Jack Keroauc and Allen Ginsberg, in the 60′s the village became the hub of the folk music movement lead by Bob Dylan which drew in the anti-war movement and the hippies. The late sixties and early seventies saw the village become the centre of the gay rights movement and of radical political groups such as the weather underground.

So over the last century Greenwich Village has been home to various divergent and often oppositional movements, philosophies, political agendas, artistic visions. What then has drawn all of these diverse groups to the Village? A common sense of being ‘defined against’, of wanting an identity that is in contrast to what is seen as the mainstream culture of the day. Thus Greenwich Village is not a movement or manifesto in of itself, it does not stand for a set of beliefs or accompanying actions. Instead it acts as a kind of floating symbol which unites people who are defining themselves against the mainstream culture, despite the fact that many of the groups and movements which found a home under that umbrella would totally disagree with each other, they all agree that they don’t want to be part of the mainstream. 

I am more and more inclined to see the Emerging Missional Church as a similar floating symbol, an umbrella under various divergent and often disagreeing mini-movements and ideologies gather, all united by their desire to not be like what they see as the defunct or irrelevant mainstream mode of Church.This is why so many find it so difficult to come up with a satisfactory list of common factors that unite those who would label themselves Emerging/Missional and why so many people found it difficult to place themselves in the large amount of mini-movements that I outlined.

But just as you thought that might simplify things a bit  they only get more confusing. Let’s return to our metaphor of Greenwich Village.  Today the Village is in many ways is gentrified and home to the kinds of wealthy professionals that the original inhabitants of the village were trying to define themselves against, one of the great ironies is that the thing that draws in the upwardly mobile to the village is the bohemian ethos. This is the reality of our post-hip culture, in which pretty much everyone defines themselves against the mainstream, and in which the mainstream no longer believes that it is mainstream. Thus today when people shell out the big bucks to live in Greenwich village they are not making a disentsablishmentary political statement, rather they are investing in their identity, finding a sense of self in the historical cultural symbol of Greenwich Village.This is is the score in the society of ‘cool’ in which we are encouraged to live in a state of permanent faux rebellion against the mythic ‘mainstream’.

And this is the rub for us folks. Do we find a sense of identity by defining ourselves against those in the mainstream church, those in the broader Christian culture? I remember back in high school the secret sense of superiority I felt being an ‘indie’ kid, looking down my nose at my classmates and what I saw as their ’plastic FM’ mainstream music tastes. To my shame and to be really honest over the last decade or more of being part of this whole “emerging scene’ I have secretly felt the same sense of delight I felt in High School at times as I defined myself against what I saw as others in the ‘mainstream’ church. I have wrongly at times sought sense a sense of self as I wrote a mental list of the ways in which I ‘got it’ in contrast to others. One thing that grabbed me in many of the blogs written about the various mini-movements is that many people used the language of ‘where I fit or where I do not fit in’ and ‘belonging’, such language made me wonder if part of this all is about how we construct identity.

Therefore we who place our selves somewhere under the broad umbrella of the Emerging Missional church must ask ourselves if have we defined ourselves against the mythical ‘other’ in order to find a sense of self? When we define against what we see as the mainstream church we marginalize others from the conversation, creating the precise ‘us and them’ dynamic which the story of the Good Samaritan subverts.

Therefore as previously stated I see the fragmentation that is occurring as a positive thing, as that we are forced to define what we are about, rather than getting caught in the cultural trap of finding a sense of self by defining against. Fascinatingly most of the mini-movements that I named in my previous article are really not that unique or new, but rather re-discoveries of older traditions. I find this incredibly encouraging, as too often a sense of arrogance accompanies new movements, and often subverts them. As we mature we may begin to realize that we are not the last great hope, maybe all we are doing is what Christians have always done, that we are simply applying unchanging truths to a changing context.

The more I read history I am not sure if we are experiencing a great Emergence: I am more inclined to wonder if what we are seeing is the same dynamic that we have always seen since the birth of the Church, that is the highly dynamic and adaptive nature of our faith. Yes I know it does not sound as sexy as labelling a our time in history as a momentous hinge, but I have a hunch that it is closer to the truth. I will leave the last word to Alistair McGrath, whose book Christianity’s Dangerous Idea started this whole train of thought,

“Those who are anxious about the future of Protestantism often urge that radical change in it’s self understanding is necessary if it is to survive, let alone prosper…The historical and theological evidence presented in this book offers a rather different answer. We have seen that Protestantism possesses a unique and innate capacity for innovation, renewal, and reform based on its own internal resources. The future of Protestantism lies precisely in Protestantism being exactly what Protestantism actually is.”

Is Fracturing Positive?

Oh its a funny old thing the internet. On Thursday I am sitting there with an hour to kill between a couple of meetings I bang out this article The Emerging Missional Church Fractures into Mini Movements. I Forget about it and then come back today and find that it has gone bonkers.

There has been a number of responses to my article but the best of the bunch is from  Jonny Baker who despite being a Chelsea supporter always has a great things to say. Jonny takes a positive spin on my article which is probably more in tune with what I was meaning. For a movement to last it must wrestle through the internal differences and conversations to move towards working out what it is really on about.Check out Jonny’s article here

The Emerging Missional Church Fractures into Mini Movements

I just finished reading Alistair McGrath’s fantastic history of protestantism  Christianity’s Dangerous Idea. It’s interesting how when the Reformation began, Protestantism united itself against what it saw as its binary opposite, Catholicism, but as time passed, Protestantism began to split into various movements and factions (eg Calvinist, Anabaptist, Anglican, Congregationalist etc), overtime these groups began to define themselves against each other rather than against the perceived enemy of the time, Rome.

The history of protestantism is a classic example of movement dynamics. Dissatisfaction creates a ground swell of support against a perceived problem, injustice or enemy. This ground swell coalesces into a movement; at first the movement’s energy and internal dialogue is centered around defining itself against the common enemy. But then as time passes the internal dialogue of the movement begins to shift away from ‘defining against’ to ‘defining itself’. Then the conversation changes and people inside the solidfying movement begin to discover that although they are united in their distaste of their ‘enemy’ there is much that they disagree with each other over. Then tensions and differences arise, fractures are followed by factions, and the new movement breaks up. (For another historical example of this check out the French revolution.)

The emerging missional church seems to be following  a very similar path, having seemingly fractured into multiple movements. In the early days it could define itself against the perceived enemy ‘the mainstream church”.The problem was that whilst everyone agreed that something new and different must be birthed that is in contrast to the ‘mainstream church’, many had differeing definitions of what ‘mainstream church’ was. For some it was large mega churches who had seemed to have capitulated to consumer culture, for others it was irrelevant, overly traditional mainline churches, for others it was  churches that were too theologically conservative, but others were rebelling against what they saw as a mainstream church that was made impotent by liberal theology. Some saw the task as being centered around creating a contextually appropriate church for post-modern people in contrast to the ‘mainstream church’ which was perceived as being too closely wedded to ‘modernity’.

Many in the United States saw the enemy as the conservative Evangelical ‘religious right’, whereas some in the UK saw themselves creating something fresh and culturally relevant in contrast to the perceived irrelevance of many Anglican parishes. For some the problem with mainstream church was it’s politics, for others it was a lack of genuine mission. So as time went on and as conversations went deeper, many in the emerging missional movement found that they were more divided than they realised. For a while a sense of tribalism and common cultural interests seemed to hold these divisions at bay. But then things started to get weirder as something unexpected happened. Not all, but many institutions, leaders, and churches that had been labelled ‘mainstream church’ by the new movement began to listen to, converse with and imitate the emerging missional movement.

Justice went from being a sidelined issue to one of the hottest causes in many mainstream churches. Books like Blue like Jazz , the Shack and The Irresistible Revolution, which most likely if had been released ten or even five years earlier, would have only been read by a small amount of readers within the emerging missional movement, began to sell by the container ship load,  and most of the readers were from ‘outside’ the movement. The line between mainstream church and the emerging missional church had become very blurred.

Inevitably the movement began to fracture and I believe now has broken up into a number of mini movements. Here is my rudimentary attempt to name  and describe some of them.

Neo-Anabaptists:  Some have called this movement the new monastics, which is quite a helpful term, but I think that a more accurate description would be Neo-Anabaptists, as this group is shaped by the ethos of the Anabaptist movement. This movement tends to be pacifist, favours incarnational living amongst the urban poor, and has a strong distrust of power, sees contemporary Western Culture and Society as being controlled by “Empire” and thus favours an approach of prophetic action by small grassroots Christian communities.I would also place in this group the growing Christian-Anarchist movement in Australia and New Zealand. This group tends also to be strongly influenced by the Catholic Worker Movement started by Dorothy Day. A key leader in this movement would be Shane Claibourne. Key books The Irresistible Revolution. The New Conspirators by Tom Sine.

Neo- Calvinists:   This group puts an emerging spin on classic Calvinism. This group views reformed theology as way out of the morally relevatist mess created by postmodernity. Whereas traditional Reformed theology viewed gifts of the spirit with suspicion, the new calvinism tends to have a charismatic edge. The neo-Calvinists also in contrast to early Calvinism, place a high emphasis on mission, and thus have begun a number of church planting efforts. Key Leaders in this movement, Mark Driscoll, Tim Keller.

Neo-Missiologists:  This group are in many ways the heirs to the church growth movement created by Donald McGavern, a returned missionary who advocated a missional approach to the West. However whereas church growth was influenced by the mechanistic leadership, marketing and organising techniques of the corporate world, the new missiologists borrow instead from the organic models found in nature. Building on the work of Christian Schwarz this group favours small simple highly reproducible forms of church. This group is also highly influenced by the missiology of Leslie Newbiggin and Paul Hiebert and favours an incarnational mode of church, that is not ‘attractional’ but rather missional. This group also borrows some of its eccleisiology from House Church theorists and practitioners such as Robert Banks and Wolfgang Simson. Thus many label this movement ‘missional’. Key leaders Neil Cole and Wolfgang Simpson and Frank Viola. Key books the Forgotten Ways, Pagan Christianity and The Organic Church.  

Neo-Clapham’s:   A strange name yes but I think a descriptive one as this group tends to be influenced by the ideas of William Wilberforce and the Clapham Sect. Whilst this movement is technically not concerend with ‘church’, one cannot underestimate its effect upon the contemporary church, and the lives of christian young adults. Whilst just as passionate about justice as the Neo-Anabaptists, the Neo-Clapham’s  tend to take a very different approach. Whereas the Neo-Anabaptists tend to favour an approach which is local, grassroots and suspicious of larger institutions, the Neo-Clapham’s take an approach that is global, large scale and campaign driven.In contrast to the Neo-Anabaptist’s, this group are less suspicious of power and thus work closely or within corporations, governments, the Entertainment industry, NGO’s and denominations. Much of the energy of the Neo-Clapham’s can be found in various movements such as Make Poverty History, Fair Trade, Human Trafficking, Blood Chocolate, and so on. Key Leaders Jim Wallis, Tim Costello, Bono, Steve Chalke, David Batstone.

Digital Pentecostals:   This movement is a recent development within Pentecostalism in the West, specifically developing out of Australia. While Pentecostalism classically was defined by outward expressions of response to the Holy Spirit, the digital pentecostals create experiential spaces through cutting edge media and technologies in which participants can respond to the Holy Spirit. This group attempt to reach out to postmodern culture by creating large church worship experiences which are highly experiential and tech savvy thus being attractive to postmodern tech savvy, experiential Gen Y’s. Many Digital Pentecostals has eschewed the ‘prosperity theology’ of their parents and instead are highly influenced by or part of the Neo-Clapham movement. In many ways this the second generation of Gen Y kids who have come of age being influenced by Hillsong. Key Leaders Joel Houston, Judah Smith. This group would not have ever seen itself as part of the emerging missional journey at any stage, but never the less is an interesting response to post-Christian culture.

Neo-Liberals:   Many who began in the Emerging Church have taken the journey further and embraced a kind of 2oth century liberalism with an emerging spin. In an attempt to reject what was seen as the cultural captivity of evangelicalism, many have questioned a number of key components of evangelical life and theology and found themselves swimming in for want of a better term ’soft liberalism’. Whereas traditional liberalism was born out of an attempt to create a theology that fit with modern sensibilities, the Ne-liberals find themselves creating a new theology in response to the post-modern context. Interestingly this group seems to be finding more and more in common with mainline liberal Churches in the United States than they do with Evangelicals. Critics would place some of the voices within the ‘Emergent” camp here.

Blenders:   This group would have placed themselves in the emerging church camp five years ago, but in response to the move away from evangelical theology by many of their former travellers (the Neo-Liberals)  they have re-affirmed their commitment to evangelical theology. This group also seems to be questioning some of the assumptions of the Neo-Missiologists and are attempting to blend a missional approach, whilst still affirming some elements of the attractional mode of church, hence the term blenders.Key leaders Erwin McManus, Dan Kimball.

 Obviously there is much cross-pollination between these groups. As well as many problems with my analysis. I am sure that there are more that I could come up with, maybe you can think of some too.

The Trouble With Twitter

Basically this video says what I was trying to say in my article “I love you but I don’t care about your status update” in a much cooler way (thanks to Phil for the link)

Thanks!

This week my blog clicked over the 50,000 page views mark for the first time since I started in May last year. It’s quite funny but I was initially quite reluctant to start blogging, and prefered sharing my thoughts with friends and whoever I was having coffee with that day; but it has been fun sharing what I have been learning with you all and it has been great meeting so many of you readers on my travels. So thanks for reading!

I Love You But I Don’t Care About Your Status Updates

For years I had a wooden mail box complete with a metal plate attached that read ‘no junk mail’. Thus junk mail was simply not a reality in my life. Then some local teens decided to launch a campaign of ‘shock and awe’ against my letter box, from which it never recovered. I then installed a brand spanking new metal box, complete with the obligatory ‘no junk mail’ sticker. However a few months later the effects of rain and weather caused my junk mail sticker to fall off and since then I have been assaulted with an avalanche of junk mail trying to sell me all kinds of products I don’t care about. The volume is simply staggering, I am sure that the amazon basin is crying as these brochures are delivered into my letter box. However I am now facing a new kind of junk mail.

I am not sure if it is the new layout of facebook or the continuing growth of twitter but I starting to feel as if I am being overrun by psychic junk mail. I find facebook like many technologies can be used for both good and bad. It is great to connect with friends in other parts of the world, or to send messages and mail quickly. However I have noticed that more and more people are using their status updates to tell me things which to be completely blunt, I simply don’t care about.

Some people use twitter and status updates to communicate things that are of importance, they act as ‘info editors’ pointing people in the direction of interesting events, links and issues. However such people are a small minority. Increasingly I am being swamped as I am sure as many of you are with inane comments that read like this,

Frank: I just cooked my two minute noodles for three minutes not two, now they are too sloppy

Hector loves puppies

Mary just watched family guy and it was really funny, she is now going to the cupboard for cookies YUM!!!!!!

Count Zinzendorf just got his trousers dirty changing a flat tire

I am sorry but I simply do not care. That is not to say that I do not care about you. I have enough trouble with wading through the minutiae of my own life, than to be bombarded with the mundane machinations of your existence.Just as I am sure that you don’t need to know boring details of my life, such as the fact that today I have a hay-fever rash from mowing the lawn on my shoulder, or that soon I will buy a chicken sandwich for lunch with avocado and cheese. These are boring details that I won’t even bother my wife with because I know that she will simply not care, not because she does not love me, but because such realities are irrelevant! Knowing about my rash and my choice of sandwich will add nothing to your life on this mortal coil.

The problem is when you log into your facebook and are confronted not with one or two such comments but thirty or forty, it becomes overwhelming. We are already facing information overload without all of these irrelevant personal broadcasts. Don’t get me wrong I am more than happy to hear from you if you have something interesting to share such as,

Fred has just invented a perpetual motion machine

Igor has just brokered a lasting peace deal between Israel and Hammas

Sue has just conclusively proven the identity of Jack the Ripper

Peter has exhumed the corpse of Elvis and is being pursued by a murderous mob of fans through the streets of Memphis

You see the thing that disturbs me most about all of this, is the question this raises about what this says about our self identity or should I say self obsession.Do we really think that people will be interested us in the way that people seem to be interested in the everyday activities of celebrities? The image that comes to my head when I think of all of this is of a man walking out of his house into the street and shouting at the top of his voice to his neighbours and friends that he is going to have a cheese sandwich, four hours later he comes out again into the night air and again screams another announcement to the street “I just watched a documentary about Whales… it was ok I guess!” If someone did this in your street you would think them insane, however this is effectively what status updates and twitter does.

Yes but you say I am only updating my ‘friends’ on what I am doing. Yes that argument works if you have somewhere around 12 facebook friends, the amount of people that we can effectivly maintain deep relationships with. Go above that number and you are treading in the waters of acquaintance, go above a hundred and you talking distant contacts, go above two hundred friends and you are talking that weird goth guy who sat behind you in English literature class who you had forgotten had existed until he added you. Facebook is great for keeping in contact with such people, but really, do three hundred people who have met you need to know that you are playing X-box with Damo?

We instead of broadcasting need to recallibrate our sense of self. We need to rediscover the lost art of humility, to understand our place in the world. Instead of dreaming up new status updates to get you through the day, mediate upon the truly freeing thought that the world does not revolve around us.

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Personal Branding as Identity 

How twitter is destroying language and conversation

“Hyperreal Christian Predictions” or “Sorry History is just not that Sexy”

When I was studying Advertising back in the day, I remember one key thing that was drilled into us by our lecturers “Cut through the clutter!”. What this meant was that the advertiser is forced to elevate her message above all of the other advertising messages out there in order to capture the attention of the consumer.

Now due to the self-publishing capabilities of the internet, Christian commentators (yours truly included) and opinions abound like never before. Coupled with this fact is also the reality that the sheer volume of information that we are faced with in overwhelming. Therefore more and more Christian commentators, leaders, authors, opinion makers and bloggers are become prone to earth shattering pronouncements in order to cut through the clutter; predicting all kinds of watershed moments from the death of evangelicalism in ten years, great emergences, sand-castle like collapses of certain denominations, traditions and structures, to overnight revolutions within the church and so on.  (Believe you me, I have made plenty myself.)

Of course all of these predictions are going to happen any moment now, they are going to shake our world, rock our foundations and leave us breathless at their gravity. These momentous predictions are great fodder for controversy and conversation, both in VR and RL. We love to speak about such predictions because they are dramatic, grand and exciting. This is history unfolding before our eyes Hollywood style, all quick cuts with THX sound. It is history jazzed up, made faster and flasher.

However there is a big problem, history rarely works so instantaneously, or dramatically. Change certainly happens, but it is almost always in increments, often unfolding over centuries. History on the whole does not operate in dramatic shifts but rather in simultaneous movements and counter movements. Yes watershed moments and epochal change does happen but it is often not recognized or named for generations.

Every generation loves to picture itself living at a watershed moment, with the destiny of all future generations in its hands. Yet the reality seems to be the life is more cyclical than evolutionary, that each generation has to make its own errors, remember forgotten past truths, and shape the world, in order for the next generation to take it apart again and so on.

Just occasionally instantaneous change does happen in a moment, yet the ironic thing is that almost nobody can predict it. I think of the two greatest moments of change that have occurred in my life 9/11 and the fall of communism. Just when we were settling in for a lifetime lived under the shadow of the cold war, David Hasselhoff’s Teutonic ballads inspired a bunch of East Germans clad in acid washed jeans to take down the Berlin wall with hammers and garden tools, and thus the Soviet Empire collapsed like a house of cards. No one saw that coming. Just as virtually no one predicted that after staring down the Soviet nuclear arsenal the United States would be attacked by a bunch of rich Saudi spoilt brats, armed simply with box cutters, Jihadist propaganda and commandeered commercial jets.

Almost magically as soon as you predict the demise off something it will roar back into fashion. Just as I never thought that Dunlop Volleys sneakers would ever be cool, as soon as you write off a tradition, denomination or style of church it is sure to undergo a renaissance that will leave you blushing and making up excuses at parties as to why you wrote that blog piece.  The reality is that these mega-predictions are more about the wishes and wants of the prognosticator, rather than what is going to happen the day after tomorrow.

 So next time someone tells you about the next momentous change that is about to come crashing upon our church and the world. Back away from the computer, make yourself a coffee, stare out the window thinking of nothing while you drink your coffee, grab a history book off the shelf and retreat to your most comfortable chair. Repeat until tantalizing feelings disappear.

Some Observations on the Underlying Cultural Meanings of American High School Movies

If you take out your sociological binoculars and gaze back across our recent pop cultural history, you will notice a trend. It begins most likely with Fast Times at Ridgemont High and stretches well into our present day with High School musical, and will most likely end sometime in the future with High School Musical 31, in which Zac Efron in his 50′s will play a jittery Science teacher.

 This trend is a genre of films in which the American High school operates as a metaphor for wider society. The amount of films that make use of this metaphor is vast and could include Heathers, Encino Man, American Pie, Clueless, Grease, 10 Things I hate about you, Pretty in Pink, Mean Girls, Ferris Buellers Day Off, Stomp the Yard, Twilight, American Beauty, Elephant, Bring it On, and so on.

All play with the social and class distinctions that make up the American High School. In most High School movies this distinction usually is polemic, pitting the Jocks/popular kids/Cheerleaders/WASP/Economically privileged against the Nerds/Alternative/Punks/Goths/Vampires/Non-WASP/Economically disadvantaged. Just as an earlier genre of British ‘school’ novels (ie Tom Brown’s School days), used the setting of British Private schools as a way of talking about class distinctions in English society, so American High School movies enable movie makers to examine the conventions and values of broader American culture, specifically the idea of class in a culture which is supposedly classless.  

Specifically the High School genre explores the concept of the meritocracy, that it is the ordering of society into a system in which personal effort and merit is rewarded. In contrast to European society which traditionally ordered itself around the class distinctions which grew out of the feudal system, the founding Fathers of the United States, desired to create a republic in which class did not matter, and in which hard work, ingenuity and entrepenurialism were rewarded.

 The high school movie genre questions this concept, asking just how fair is the meritocracy, the Jocks and cheerleaders symbolize the privileged upper classes of the United States. Some films portray the redemption of the privileged classes of the high school such as Clueless or Bring it On, in which the privileged develop a social conscience, other movies such as Heathers take a much darker view, portraying the elite as psychopathic narcissists capable of murder. 

Almost always the elites in High School movies hold onto their power through violence. The jocks use their brawn, and the cheerleaders/popular girls use their sexuality as a weapon.  Many high school movies also use the symbol of the Jock and the Cheerleader as examples of the distortion of male and female roles in American culture. The Jock is a muscular, sleazy, unintelligent, vain, bully, and the cheerleader is a shallow, manipulative, catty, sex object.

Thus the high school movie, becomes a way of asking as to whether the system of meritocracy is slanted in the favour of the wealthy, powerful and attractive. Some films ask for the destruction of the whole system such as Rock ‘n’ Roll high School in which The Ramones watch on as the High School blows up, to movies such as Remember the Titans in which the African American students exploits on the basket ball court prove the meritocracy still works for those willing to work hard despite their race or creed.

An interesting slant on the high school movie is Saved! Set at a Christian private school, Saved! obviously reflecting on the rise of the religious right in American life, posits the Christian kids as the elite and re-tells the usual High School movie in the social context of evangelical America. 

An interesting High School movie which does not follow the trend is Harry Potter. I wonder if part of the attraction of the Harry Potter phenomenon to readers and viewers in the United States, is that Hogwart’s college in comparison to the American High Schools shown in films seems like some educational Utopian paradise. Sure there a couple of bad eggs, and jibes from the rich kids, but the usual American high school class divisions on the whole seem to be absent from Hogwart’s college as kids of every creed and colour mix together.

A key element of this mixing seems to be the concept of houses, that is the internal ‘teams’ that our found in British and Commonwealth schools. Whereas in American high School the internal competition is based in individual versus individual, in the British system a Jock and a Goth can be thrown together in order compete against other ‘houses’, thus weakening the schools internal subcultures, (a reality which is ironic considering the early British School genre) .

Taking this all into account the High School movie genre show no signs of abating, and for all of you youth culture vultures out there, is a worthwhile subject to keep your eye on in order to hear the story being told behind the story.

The New Calvinism

“If you really want to follow the development of conservative Christianity, track its musical hits. In the early 1900s you might have heard “The Old Rugged Cross,” a celebration of the atonement. By the 1980s you could have shared the Jesus-is-my-buddy intimacy of “Shine, Jesus, Shine.” And today, more and more top songs feature a God who is very big, while we are…well, hark the David Crowder Band: “I am full of earth/ You are heaven’s worth/ I am stained with dirt/ Prone to depravity.”

Calvinism is back, and not just musically. John Calvin’s 16th century reply to medieval Catholicism’s buy-your-way-out-of-purgatory excesses is Evangelicalism’s latest success story…”

The New Calvinism makes it into Time Magazines “Ten ideas that are changing the world right now” List. Read here

Michael Jackson and Discipleship – New Podcast

It’s been a while since I last put up a podcast so here is the first one to kick off 09. In this episode I link the life story of Michael Jackson, the Peter Pan syndrome, lowering standards of discipleship and the easter Story. Listen or download here

You can download or subscribe through itunes here

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Everything’s amazing, nobody’s happy

Thanks to Christoph for pointing this out.

Secularism and the Post-Traditional Culture.

Today I had the privilege of addressing a gathering of 60 key leaders in the church across Melbourne, representatives were present from Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox churches, ministries and colleges. The reason for the gathering was to release the information from a two year report into the state of the Church here in Melbourne.  Check out more details here

One of the highlights was hearing one of the key authors of the report Phillip Hughes of the Christian Research Association speak. Phillip is always a fount of knowledge as to where we are as a culture, especially in terms of contemporary religion. One of the key points that Phillip made was that increasingly the concept of secularisation is failing us as an accurate means of describing our culture. Rather than naming the beast of secularisation as the cause of diminishing congregations in the West, Phillip identified a consumerist approach to life and religion and our glut of personal choice as the reason for the decline in church attendance in the West. The erosion of the traditional ideas of civic duty and responsibility were deeply affecting the vitality of the church in the West. Phillip used the term Post-Traditional in order to describe our culture. Phillip’s analysis many of my own hunches and convictions. That is the belief that one of the great needs of our age is to call people away from the idols of radical individualism, hyper-consumerism and to return to a biblical understanding of discipleship.  

What’s wrong with ‘the’ Church?

If you want to make a lot of money today, write a book about how the Church is messed up. It will sell well outside of the Church but it will sell even better inside of the Church. You could write on how the Church is out of touch culturally, how it is too judgemental, how it is too right wing, or too left wing. You could say how it needs to change it’s theology, or where it meets, or how it needs change it’s worship style. How it is too large, too small, to hyped, too sombre.

 

Everyone has an opinion of how the church should change itself. At some stage into our minds crept the idea that the Church was to be perfect, that those verses in Acts 2:40-42 summarized the norm rather than the ideal.

 

However a careful reading of Matthew 26 shows us that Jesus knew full well that the new people that he was forming, the body that would be known as the Church, would be far from perfect. How it was a reflection of the process of sanctification that individuals were undergoing. That sometimes it would reflect a company of sinners and at other times it would reflect a host of saints.

At the Last Supper, that feast that would be an echo of the Messianic feast that would usher in the Kingdom in its fullness. Jesus let’s us know that the real enemy is not outside of the people of God but that a traitor dwells within. Judas betrayal is proceeded by the Disciples indignation over Jesus seemingly forgetting his social justice responsibilities and instead lauding the woman who worshiped with expensive perfume. Again the seeds of betrayal may have been sown at this point, as human agenda’s even though noble and just begin to compete with Jesus’ own Kingdom viewpoints.

In fact Jesus sobering message to his disciples, the band who will form the apostolic foundation of the Church is that they will all fall. Even Peter the man who more than other in history represents the Church falls and denies who he is meant to be, a follower of Christ. However despite this fall grace abounds, there is a direct link between the fates of Judas and Peter.

Both deny Christ, however Peter, is humbled, he understands that all have fallen short of the Glory of God. This rambunctious, obstinate fisherman, allows himself to be shaped by grace, and out of rock God carves something stunning, a foundation upon which to build his church. In contrast, Judas’ betrayal seems to be founded upon a growing sense of mistrust. Obviously to be chosen as the group’s treasurer he was a man of trust and reliability. How do you go from being a disciple with a privileged position of responsibility to selling Jesus out? Judas’ betrayal appears to be born of a slow growing concern that became indignation that in term became treachery. It seems that Judas measured Jesus’ messianic credentials with his own human measurements rather than with an openness to what God was doing in his midst.

Thus Matthew 26 offers us a theology of the imperfect Church. It prevents us from pointing fingers a ‘the’ church, and instead asks us to prayerfully ask what is wrong with ‘us’ as members of the Church.  Sure we need prophet’s who will call the church to account, but prophet’s messages always first are lived out through their lives. They are born of personal repentance and conviction, the prophets first task is to reform his or herself. (Believe you me I know, and have made this mistake myself countless times.) Matthew 26 reminds us not to make it about ‘them’ but instead to begin with ’me’.

Hyperreal Australia

Australia sold as Hyperreal Experience

It’s Cool to be Tween…But not a Child

As I get around speaking on youth culture, one thing I get asked a lot about is the phenomenon of tweens. USA today gives a good overview of all things tween in this article

“The prepubescent children of days gone by have given way to a cooler kid — the tween — who aspires to teenhood but is not quite there yet…Retailers know tweens are a hot market for clothes, music and entertainment. But now psychologists and behavioral researchers are beginning to study tweens, too. They say tweens are a complicated lot, still forming their personalities, and are torn between family and BFFs, between fitting in and learning how to be an individual.”

Read Full article here

A Brave New World of Babies

 ”A LOS Angeles fertility clinic is offering to design a baby to the parents’ exact requirements.

The Fertility Institutes’ clinic service gives the chance to select physical traits through “cosmetic medicine”. Prospective parents can request a son with brown eyes, black hair and a dark complexion, or a pale, blonde, green-eyed daughter.”

Read Full Article Here

Speaking tonight

I will be speaking tonight at Elevate at Citylife Church. Details here, might catch you there.

Facebook fuelling our Vanity?

“Last week leading neuroscientist Lady Susan Greenfield warned that social network sites “risk infantilising the mid-21st century mind”, leaving a legacy of short attention spans, trouble empathising, sensationalism, and a shaky sense of identity.

As well showing concern about the risk of such sites shortening attention spans (producing similar symptoms to those of children with attention deficit disorder), she worried about our need for instant reactions and constant reassurance when using the sites. The latter arises from how much of our ego is at play online.”

Read Full article Here   Also check out Facebook and Faith