The wheel turns…

From Martin Boutros, Mission & Ministry Executive Director:

Many years ago, a small group of believers challenged the reactionary autocracy that the mainline Church had become. The church had imposed a creedal legalism on the people that effectively separated the ordinary man and woman from the simple but life-changing message of New Testament faith in Christ.

This new radical movement wanted to by-pass the religious and clerical constructs of the day and call believers to a simple Spirit-directed, bible based faith. They studied the Scriptures together; they relished their common unity around the bread and the wine, and they proclaimed Christ – not the rituals and intrigues of established religion. The ‘brothers’, as they were known, coined the phrase: “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; and in all things love.”

The fearless preaching of their leader disturbed the Church and the religious culture of his day so much that he was put to death by the religious establishment of his day. I speak, of course, of Jan Hus and the Moravian movement of the 1400s. Though their legacy was to pave the way for the first large-scale protestant mission movement and for the Reformation a century later, the entrenched church culture of the day pushed their little movement to the very margins.

The Scripture narrative by which we live is about the conflict between two Kingdoms and their respective cultures – The Kingdom of this world with its powers and principalities versus the Kingdom of God, so radically proclaimed by Jesus.

The story of redemption is about ‘culture change’ – it’s being birthed into God’s kingdom, a new heart and a new mind leading to new attitudes and new behaviours. Discipleship is about the lifelong, intentional reflecting on one’s attitudes and behaviours in the light of God’s calling. “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

The people of God are to be this peculiar ‘halfway’ people – journeying from Egypt to the Promised Land with God. Learning to put off the mental bondage of captivity and becoming the free covenant people of God – a Light to the nations. And yet the Bible is marked by struggle, failure, grace and redemption. The people of God are always struggling to leave behind the gods of Egypt and Canaan. Every Judge and every King of Israel struggles with entrenched culture. Which god are we serving? Which belief system? The tribes and clans of Canaan are married into and slowly their culture becomes endemic and Yahweh is marginalised. All through the stories of the Judges and Kings there is a downward spiral ending in exile to Babylon – and then grace, and God grows a new shoot from the dead stump.

In the New Testament most of the letters are written to deal with cultural issues – almost none of the Pauline epistles are about ‘vision’ or ‘governance’ or ‘programmes’ – it’s all about Jewish legalistic culture or Gentile permissiveness or Gnostic super spirituality or the spirit of Rome – humanity’s greatest attempt at heaven on earth contrasted to the Kingdom of God’s culture – and it’s very painful for Paul and the other leaders. Two steps forward, one step back!

The history of God’s church is the same – the slide into Christendom with Constantine through the valiant resistance of martyrs like Jan Hus, culminated in Martin Luther’s nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenberg cathedral door and unleashing a chaotic, powerful reaction to the decadent culture of the medieval church.

The evangelical movements or ‘Awakenings’ of the 18th and 19th century revolted against the immovably, traditional, nationalistic state churches of the era. You see it in the evolution of the various movements such as the Wesleyans, the Salvationists, the various Disciples, Adventists, Brethren, and Baptists. These various ‘waves’ – overseas missions, Pentecostalism, the para-church movements, church growth, and the emerging church all emerged in response to decadent and inflexible church culture and each birthed fresh, fluid expressions of faith.

Our own tribe tumbled out of such turbulence. How wonderful that the radical Moravian slogan of four hundred years before should also mark our movement of two hundred years hence! “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; and in all things love.” The rich chaos of the Spirit of that time spawned many related but divergent movements. Movements always diverge and differentiate into more sharply defined entities. Out of the happy chaos of the book of Judges, comes the sombre orderliness of Kings! Movements have always become ministries and then machines and then slowly un-noticed by their now conservative guardians, they freeze into stone monuments … But God in his grace sows seeds into the cracks of the weathering stone and new green shoots emerge.

And now the wheel has turned again and in the 2000’s the fresh new movements of 200 years ago are almost monuments themselves. Movements tend to be chaotic! Their members ‘live a conviction’ rather than ‘go to work’. They are highly relational, green-zone, fluid, self-managing, team focussed. The leaders proclaim the story rather than the policy. They are prophetic. They are imaginative culture-shapers – and their people interpret and build the new forms, experimentally, under-the-surface, in poverty, by faith, with passion. They expect resistance and difficulty, and learn to negotiate the possible. Sometimes they die prematurely. Often it’s the dominant system and culture that asphyxiate them.

We in Mission and Ministry are leaders in a small and relatively healthy network of churches, and we see that many inherited paradigms are failing. Australia is not a Christian nation. Australian church numbers are declining and aging, and, for most of the younger people in our society, churches are way out of touch. This is no longer about us helping service our ‘going concerns’ but with urgency praying for renewal and creatively going out on a limb. This is risky, but that’s the life of faith.

We don’t wish to imitate the good proprietors of Cobb and Co anxiously peering out at the noisy T-model Fords puttering along asphalt roads and then turning to design a better horse. Cobb and Co exists no more. In a few years Ford with its carbon unfriendly metal beasts will either be in terminal decline or will have re-invented itself for a new age. We pray for a cultural shift. Our churches are often either immersed in consumer modernity or fortressed off from the world in a 1950s bubble.

What we aspire for our churches is cultural shift: a missionary paradigm; a bible-narrative from which to live; a contextual mission mindset; a centripetal culture; a discipleship culture; an incarnational mindset; an empowering leadership; a ‘sent’ membership and so on. This is not about change of programs but change of paradigm.

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How is your church’s paradigm responding to the changing world around us?

Renewal Leadership

From Paul Cameron—Executive Officer:

In writing last year about Renewal Prayer, I quoted an excerpt of a piece I’ve begun to write about personal spiritual formation and leadership formation. I want to repeat the quote, and then take it in a slightly different direction than earlier. I’d be interested in your thoughts about it.

Generally speaking in Churches of Christ, over the last 20-30 years, we may have failed to facilitate effective ‘personal spiritual formation’. In other words, we may have not done what we used to call ‘discipleship’ that well. Lives may have not been transformed. Often we have failed to develop in people the skills and capacities to feed themselves. In some places this may have been in reaction to formulaic discipleship processes, in other places it may have been replaced by either knowledge-centred or experience-based learning. Each are valid (and valuable), but not in isolation. Another challenge to deeper spiritual formation is the relatively low level ‘Sunday School’ teaching that was popular in the 20^th Century.

As I said then my theory is that this has had a significant impact on our spiritual formation, as well as the development of all forms of leadership in our movement. I would like to suggest that this is one reason for some of the gaps in the list of minister-leaders in Churches of Christ. It is important (even encouraging?) to note that this challenge is not unique to us. It is part of the seismic, systemic changes that are underway in ‘church’ everywhere, something that Phyllis Tickle likens to a periodic ‘cleaning out of the attic’ of the church (in The Great Emergence, Baker, 2008). It is my view that personal spiritual formation (or discipleship), its content, the way it is taught, and who teaches it, are key pieces in the dilemma. So let’s simply deal with that theme this time around.

Firstly, over the period mentioned the emphasis on minister-formation appears to have been biased towards the P/S and T end of the APEP/ST spectrum (maybe APEST is a better acronym than APEPT or APEP/ST). To translate, most ministers formed in this period have been Pastor/Shepherd types, plus some Teachers, rather than Apostolic, Prophetic or Evangelist. You will recall this ‘five-fold’ shape of ministry from Ephesians 4:11. Pastor/Shepherds and Teachers are important, and valuable, but they don’t provide a complete leadership mix required among God’s people.

It is possible that this emphasis has impacted the personal spiritual formation of many members (or former members) of our churches, and therefore the formation of leaders (or people who could have been leaders). We have just not been forming enough of the sort of leaders we need for this time of rapid, discontinuous change. In turn, these leaders are not developing enough followers of Jesus for these times. And hear me right, I’m not having a go at anybody or any particular institution or theological position held; for this has been true right across ‘mainline’ churches all around the world. Maybe it was promoted by the once prevalent personal renewal and group dynamics theory and practice that emerged from a rather eclectic mixing of 19^th Century theology and 20^th Century psychology that at times appeared more humanist than anything else. It has certainly been challenged by more recent renewal movements that are based around a balance of prayer, worship, biblical discovery, mission, justice, service, imagination, spiritual gifts and the fruit of the Spirit.

One value of welcoming people into the ministry and leadership of Churches of Christ from other tribes, particularly from those that are more open to the five-fold balance found in Ephesians 4, and other contemporary renewal practices, is that it helps balance the APEST spectrum within our movement. Of course this can bring challenges around identity and culture, but that makes for healthy rigor in the system, requiring some of the processes currently under development in Vic/Tas. Hospitality (or ‘welcoming the stranger’) shown to leaders who can imagine the future, and who are committed to seek God’s dream for the world (or his Kingdom) will bear fruit as the century unfolds. We will become better equipped to cultivate healthy and growing churches with more healthy and growing minister-leaders and leader-leaders in this renewal movement we are prayerfully allowing God to shape.

Secondly, this hospitality expresses the historic ecumenical spirit of Churches of Christ. After all, “the church is one”, and “we are Christians only and not the only Christians”. Our deeper story has forever been to make room for everybody who is a fellow believer in Jesus, and to release them all—women and men, younger and older people—into ministry and mission.

By the way, the following chart (adapted from The Missional Leader by Alan Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk, Jossey-Bass, 2006) is a helpful contrast of leadership styles. We need more ‘missional’ leaders. I look forward to adding lots more of this type of leader—ones who can imagine and cultivate God’s dream for the world—to our ministry database in the future. I am confident we will soon see many more of these leaders emerging from within Churches of Christ (and staying with us, and leading us), and I hope that along the way we will always be hospitable to those who want to join our team of people in ministry and mission. 

What do you think?

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“Pastoral” Leadership	Missional Leadership
Expectation that an ordained minister must be present at all meetings and events or it is not valid or important	Ministry staff operate as coaches and mentors within a system that is not dependent upon them to validate the importance and function of every group by being present
Ordained ministers give attention to and take care of people in the church by being present for all the people, as they are needed. If people other than ordained clergy give care and attention, while it may be more appropriate and effective, it is “second” class. Time, energy and focus shaped by the ‘need’ and ‘pain’ agendas of people.	Ministers equip and release the multiple ministries of the people of God throughout the church
Ministers provide solutions	Ministers ask questions that cultivate the environment that engages the imagination, creativity and gifts of God’s people involving them in discerning solutions
Preaching and teaching is providing answers and telling people what is right and wrong  - Telling  - Didactic  - Re-enforcing assumptions  - Principles for living	Preaching and teaching invites the people of God to engage Scripture as a living word that confronts them with questions and draws them into a distinctive world  - Metaphor/stories  - Asks new questions
Peacemakers: suppress or fix conflict	Makes tension OK: conflict facilitators
Keep playing the whole game like we are still THE Major League Team and THE Major League Players	Indwell the local and contextual; cultivate the capacity for congregation to ask imaginative questions about its present and its next stages
Recovery experts: make it like it used to be	Cultivators of imagination and creativity
Function as the managers, maintainers, and resourcers of a series of centralized ministries focused in and around the building that everyone must support. Always seen as the champion and primary support agent for everyone’s specific ministry	Create an environment that releases and nourishes the missional imagination of all our people though diverse ministries and missional teams that impact their various communities, the city, nation and world with the gospel of Jesus Christ