New Ways of Being Church

Conversations on renewal and transformation in mainline congregations

March 15-18, 2009

Yes, there are signs of hope for the Church in the post-modern and post-Christian era! In 2009, Louisville Seminary welcomes a celebrated trio of church leaders/scholars who are spreading the news that the Church of the 21st Century can and does re-think, re-tradition, and re-invent itself.

• Diana Butler Bass, historian and author of the popular book Christianity for the Rest of Us, brings with her inspirational presentation solid research showing that mainline congregations are thriving as communities that practice ancient Christian traditions.
• Marcus Borg, a prominent New Testament scholar, speaks for many who seek a fresh, credible, and progressive understanding of Jesus Christ for this age. His forthcoming book is simply titled Jesus.
• Brian McLaren is a pastor and author who best represents the “Emerging Church” from an evangelical perspective, but his presentations and books, including A Generous Orthodoxy and Everything Must Change, elude simple labels.
• With closing worship led by LPTS Alum Preacher Mike Pentecost (MDiv ‘98), pastor of Brentwood Presbyterian Church in Brentwood, Tenn.

For more information about this event, contact David Sawyer, Director of Lifelong Learning and Advanced Degrees, dsawyer@lpts.edu, or Leah Bradley, Director of Alum & Church Relations, lbradley@lpts.edu, 1-800/264-1839.

I will be the first person to admit that even our lowest standard of living is higher than many countries average daily income levels. We are not the worst. We are also sitting atop a volatile mountain of debt, spending, and imaginary power cells. What the fuck are we living for? Where is the service to Christ? Where is the transformation? We are dying as a church in the west and people say they care but they are not supporting it.

I wrote this in response to Carol’s post. I am not a pastor, but a seminarian on the verge of graduation. I am terrified to go into ministry. All of the fears you spoke of add to my anxiety. What shall I do to ensure I can afford to raise a family or even serve a congregation? I heard far too much, “trust God! It is a matter of faith.” I agree trusting God is the beginning. Where is the practice of trust when it comes to financial support from the congregations? Folks will complain, but they will not support.

We are all to blame in the decline. We are part of the problem. This stance of “trust God and if you do not then you have no faith” removes the responsibility from congregations, the Body, and all have in supporting the church. We do not train pastors for free. Is it fair and good stewardship to expect these individuals to shoulder the cost of training that is required?

We have to pay 80 dollars per ordination exam — that is 400 dollars if you can pass these antiquated monsters in the first shot. Not many do! Then there are the psychological evaluations, anywhere from 600 to 2500 dollars. Then the cost of seminary itself, from 10,000 to 15,000 per year for tuition and an additional 10,000 or so to live each year. That is about 60,000 to 75,000 in debt to begin your service with. We need to be smarter with this. If we say we are concerned with the death of the church then we need to step up and support.

The day of the full time pastor maybe behind us. I for one think it is. We must seek sustainable ways to minister in the context to which we find ourselves. Does this mean we have to do away with seminaries and the education they provide? No, the seminary education is foundational to service in the reformed tradition. We must change our lives to live responsibly and centered on Christ.

I used to joke that I wanted to open the First Presbyterian Church of Holy Rollers Bowling Alley. I am no longer joking. Is a coffee house, pub, bowling alley, or restaurant the answer? It is sustainable and attracts folks. In some areas it would respond to the desire and need of a distanced population. It would provide a place for community, care, warmth, outreach, and financial resistance. We just need folks to grasp the idea. Like one of my favorite groups would said, “Rage full on!”

In conjunction with a new way we can inventory our stuff and ask: Do we need the ipod? The newest phone? The cable TV? The two cars? The this or the that? All of this stuff is nice. What does it say about what you live your life for and for whom you live for? I am a f’king hypocrite right along with many of us. I crave the technologies! The Apple computers. The name brand running shoes, the jeans, the shirts, the designer vitamins and food. I love to eat out and am overweight and a burden to this world. I do not practice all that I preach. I need grace, forgiveness, and courage to be what I have witnessed in this world. To stand against the tyranny of consumerism and stereotypes, and hopelessness.

There is a better way. Please pray about it and pray that we can find the way to the cross and sit at the feet of Jesus. The rebel rousing Jesus that roundhouse kicks the money lenders out of a house of Prayer. WTFWJD?

There has been much ado about postmodernism these days. There is postmodern architecture, postmodern philosophy, postmodern art, postmodern film, postmodern literature, postmodern music, postmodern theater, postmodern theology, and even postmodern postmodernism. You cannot escape conversation in many circles without postmodernism entering into it and mocking your modern intellectual vision.

The effects upon the cultural landscape moves today into tension with tomorrow. It begs us to ask the questions of where, when, why, and how of the very human fabric that weaves history, time, and space into a society or does it?

No matter how you interpret postmodernism you must contend that it is a reaction to the status quo. It is rooted in an outsider perspective that mounts attitudes of “us verses them” upon a position of entitlement.

What is Postmodern Theology?
Postmodern Christian theology is a theology rooted in reaction to the status quo. It should be counter-cultural in nature. It seeks to disturb and transform those engaged in the practice of theology. It looks to the pervading culture for means to express and illuminate the gospel message of Jesus Christ. It must not be comfortable or commodified. Theology that seeks to transform cannot and should not be consumed like fun size Halloween candy. To partake in the radical transforming nature of the gospel direct opposition to the status quo is called for.

Gone is the ability to stoically sit by as the gospel is used to propagate a conquering message that excludes and builds division. We are far to concerned with difference rather than similarities.

All are called to ministry. All are sought after to serve. In the Presbyterian tradition being a Minister of the Word and Sacrament does not entitle you to anything more than service. There is no difference between congregation and pastor. We are a body of Believers! Some of us have lost our salt. We are SALboosT as a denomination already.

Where must we go from here?

My outcome in this process
In the course of researching the topic of Postmodern understanding of call I conducted many interviews. I came across a few conclusions:

1. Call is relative to one’s culture.
2. Postmodern understanding of call is rooted in vocational understanding and a longing for security.
3. Action is called for today. we must seek to engage the culture around us to become effective instruments of witness.

There is need for ministers, pastors, and preachers. There is also a need for the understanding of these roles to sift and become more flexible. Churches would benefit from becoming uncomfortable and challenge he status quo. What are you protecting and from what are you protecting it from? In a world full of adjectives, may we be a people of verbs.

• Blogging as a Spiritual Discipline and The Case for Facebook by Bruce Reyes-Chow
• Blogging 101 by Adam Walker Cleaveland
• Your Own Personal Gutenberg by Neal Locke and Shawn Coons
• An article by Leslie Scanlon about the use blogs in church which features BJ Woodworth of The Open Door
• The paper copy also has an article about the recent event in Pittsburgh by myself which may soon be online as well.

Enjoy!

Always Reforming: Emergence in the Presbyterian Church

October 12th & 13th, 2007, featuring John Franke, Karen Sloan, Adam Walker Cleaveland, Brian Wallace, BJ Woodworth, Andrew Purves, Scott Sunquist and a whole host of other amazing pastors, leaders, teachers, and students. This is a big event for Pittsburgh Theological Seminary (where I am a student), but also for Emergent Pittsburgh, and the local churches which will be participating, such as The Open Door.  If you’re in the area, please consider coming - it’s going to be a great weekend!

For more information, just check out Emergent Pittsburgh. 

I have just hit the up swing from my bout with the pneumonia, which coincided with the first week of classes. Am still rather tired and now much more overwhelmed than normal. This must be accounted for as I write this. But alas I am tired. I read many books on post modern religious application and seek to be a light or perhaps a better term a lightning rod for change in the denomination.

We are doing good things(?). I just wonder where the transformation is. Where is the radical love present in the gospel. I hear all the time the need for something new. Yet folks are fearful of putting themselves out there as transparent, vessels of God’s undying love. We have to answer the call to love, the call to justice, and the call to radical transformation from the bondage of the status quo!

As I near graduation and the possible venture into ministry I am growing convicted of the need to challenge the system and F’ stuff up. The church is so afraid of dying IT WILL DIE! Is this not what we are called to do? Are we not to die unto Christ?

Then as a reformed church where is transformation visable in our denomination? I am frustrated by the power struggle for property and material goods. I wish we would be so passionate and hungry to serve the poor and marginalized as we are in keeping “truth” and order in the proper hands.

It is my understanding that the emerging ethos demands that we address the world via a relevant cultural lens that highlights the love of God. To radically endeavor to be followers of Christ in ways that embrace culture not isolate and hoginize it. If fear is in the equation than walking any walk will lead us to another stalemate with the status quo. We must challenge the status quo. I struggle with balencing transformation and grace.

This is when I resort to my favorite Acronym, WTFWJD?

The expletive f@%k is the only adjective I can think of that is close to my frustration when I think about our failure to do and our zeal to do not. How can w earnestly move to wards reconciliation with a desperate longing fit for an outsider. Cause folks we are outsiders looking into righteousness.

Today marked one less hoop to jump through, hopefully. The Church Polity Ordination Exam was today, and it was the last of 4 (Church Polity, Theology, Worship & Sacraments, and Exegesis) ordination exams PC(USA)ers have to take - and pass - in order to get ordained. I say hopefully because I thought this exam was pretty straight-forward and simple. That post-exam feeling can be good - or it can mean that I totally didn’t get the questions. I’m hoping that it means I just did well and my Presbyterian Polity course at Columbia really paid off.

I’m really not a fan of these ordination exams. While it’s just one way to “test” to see if you’re ready to be a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), an incredible amount of weight is put on these timed exams. You have three hours for each of the Church Polity, Theology and Worship & Sacraments exams, and you get about a week for the take-home exegesis exam. If you fail, you fail - and you can’t move on in the ordination process until you’ve passed. Let alone the fact that some people aren’t good test-takers, it is an incredibly inauthentic process. You basically just have to say what you think the readers/graders of the exams are going to want to hear. So whether or not you believe what you write, and whether or not you’d actually act in such a way when you actually get out into the real world of ministry, you still have to “pretend” to be a good, Book-of-Order-abiding Presbyterian Inquirer/Candidate for ministry. And then you have to get a good grader. If any of your own “personal” theology or thoughts on ministry slip through your 40+ pages of writing for the four exams, and your reader disagrees with you, they can mark you down. One reader told me that it also really depends on the reader’s mood. While I’m sure they are told to be as objective as possible - one could argue whether that really happens.

Should we get rid of ordination exams? I don’t know. Maybe. Some might then argue that we wouldn’t know if people know enough “Reformed theology” or if they are proficient enough in their Greek or Hebrew (as if most will ever continue to use it once in parish ministry). Shouldn’t the process be such that relationships are formed between Inquirers/Candidates and their CPMs (Committee on Preparation for Ministry) where the committees should know that anyway because of their history with each person in the process. I suppose that’s easier for me to say when my Presbytery currently only has 2 Inquirers/Candidates going through the process.

There must be a better way. Anyone have any ideas?

Ever since I read about ancient practice of “White Martyrdom” in Thomas Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization, I have been fascinated with “new monasticism,” and the resurgence of communal, liturgical practice. Like Karen, I have longed for a way to “enter into a way of life with a community intentionally invested in forming a shared life.” I was really bummed when, at the age of 31, I first learned about the Taize community in France (for young adults up to age 30).

In the fall of 2008, I’ll be enrolling in Seminary. I’ve really gone back and forth on this one, and was once adamantly opposed to the idea of seminary. Now, I’m committed to it as part of my process for ordination in the PCUSA, but I still struggle when people ask me “why” I want to go to seminary. I meet a lot of pastors who consider seminary a place of “practical/vocational training” for ministers. That just doesn’t resonate with my postmodern, emerging self, nor do I think (sorry, apologies to those who disagree — just my opinion) most modern seminaries function well in this capacity.

Enter Karen’s Flirting With Monasticism, and a description of her experience as part of a group of Christians during her undergraduate years:

“Ministry easily flowed out of living so closely with others. Prayer needs and opportunities to serve were often quite obvious. Finding time to toss a Frisbee or joining a group for a meal didn’t require a great deal of effort. We had discussions in our classrooms, and we continued thoses discussions back in our rooms. Invitations to Bible studies were regularly given. Interactions with the broader campus community were nearly constant. My mentors were committed to praying together for the needs of people on campus and for each other. As I prayed with them and did ministry alongside them, a vibrant depth of friendship emerged that I could draw strength from and invite others into.”

While she does go on to point out how temporary college communal experiences are in contrast to the permanence of life in a Dominican order, it got me to thinking. At the conclusion of the book, Karen issues this challenge:

“Not everyone will be called to join an order. However, if we are paying attention to the internal prompting of the Holy Spirit, we may find ourselves flirting with monasticism. We may find ourselves considering how we can live by rhythms of contemplation and action in community with other followers of Jesus.”

In this light, perhaps postmodern emegents can view seminary as a monastic experience: Not so much an attempt to meet externally imposed expectations or criteria, not rushing and focused on a “future career,” but rather a chance to slowly, deliberately study something we love, in a close-knit, residential community of “novitiate” seminarians mentored by “professed” faculty, all working together toward a common goal — with the daily rhythms of study, chapel, fellowship, discussion, and prayer.

Thinking about it that way, for me at least, transforms seminary from an ordeal to endure, to something much more…attractive. And I’m starting to feel fliratious. Thanks, Karen.