I’ve been doing a lot of reading these days. Having been accepted into a doctoral program at Fuller Theological Seminary, and knowing that my first class will be here before I know it, reading has become my newly prioritized favorite passtime. I couldn’t be happier to be reading the stuff I am either. It is inspiring and life-giving and speaks volumes to the church in North America today. One of my professors, Alan Roxburgh, posted this on his blog yesterday and it was so inspiring that I wanted to share it with those of you who peek into this blog once in awhile.
By the way, I’m hoping this becomes a meaningful avenue for many of our church family (and other visitors too, of course) and I hope you’ll take the time to engage in some dialogue by leaving comments. It is important to me that the next 4-6 years of my studies bless not just my own heart and soul but also speak to and inform Almond Valley, blessing, encouraging, and empowering Almond Valley as we seek to engage with the mission of God here in Ripon. It is as much for me as it is for you that I embark on this training through Fuller Seminary. So, join the conversation. I want to hear from you.
Until the next post, be inspired by a few thoughts from Dr. Roxburgh…especially as we continue through Holy Week.
Pastor Lloyd
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For more information on Dr. Alan Roxburgh and the Roxburgh Missional Network, visit their website at: www.roxburghmissionalnet.com
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Rancorous Times & Holy Week
Wednesday, 31 March 2010 18:38 Alan Roxburgh
Driving through Ohio last week I was struck by all the signs on people’s lawns decrying “ObamaCare”. Many of these signs, like television scenes of public officials shouting at each other and putting one another in the worst light, seem to indicate we are living in a time of heightened conflict and polarizing rhetoric no matter which side one falls across on a series of issues. It was surprising and disconcerting to be in Germany among Christians of differing ages and from various churches and see the way in which the rancor around the words ‘missional’ and ‘emergent’ had travelled across the Atlantic to quickly poison dialogue in a very different context.
These are hard and confusing times for all of us – no matter our politics, racial/ethnic identities or religious views. We all find ourselves in this new space where the maps that once worked so well for us no longer describe the land in which we find ourselves. This will always bring out the extremes along with the need to set straw arguments in order to demonize the other. It’s hard to believe we are in Holy Week, walking with the One who chose not to fight in all the usual ways but to embrace and give his life for a radically different imagination. The anger and blame among Christians of differing views seems to make a lie of the Cross.
I am particularly struck by the ways we continue defaulting to simplistic solutions. The one’s I notice come in two forms. The most obvious is the way we create false polarities. We are either for ‘freedom’ (of a certain kind) or against it. We are either part of a dying ‘institutional’ church or the new, ‘organic’ movements of God. I am deeply suspicious of these simplistic solutions. My experience of life is just far too messy and grey to imagine that these either/or polarities have any connection to what I see going on across North America at this moment. In the midst of all the rancor and confusion about where we are, whose philosophies are right and which kinds of churches have a future I detect something very different.
The other form of solution giving I observe is what I call the straight-line-theory. It keeps popping up in all kinds of ways these days. Someone will make a commentary in the media about the ways in which a series of actions will inevitably lead to an obvious conclusion and why can’t the silly people on the other side see it! The one that frustrates me the most just now (probably because of the people I’ve been with over the last twelve months) is the claim that the so-called old mainline denominations are dying and don’t have a future. This is a classic illustration of straight-line-thinking. It goes something like this: Look at all the stats! Extrapolate them out and these denominations are clearly on the way to extinction. Look at their leaders – they just don’t get it! I remember news clips from British newspapers several years ago using the same arguments. All the stats pointed to one, singular conclusion: the Church of England had no future. These straight line prognosticators, the lovers of stats, could never imagine a different story; but, in God’s economy the unexpected is happening. In the UK these dowager, old, not-with-it churches are coming alive in all kinds of unexpected ways.
We are not watching the end or death of old mainline denominations. We are at the end of a long night; we are coming to the beginning of a new dawn for these churches. This doesn’t mean that their head offices have suddenly figured out the solutions to decline – they haven’t. But then new futures hardly come from those directions. The reality is that God has been, and still is, at work in these older church systems. My theology tells me that when these systems find themselves pushed outside their places of power and success this means the Spirit of God is at work again in these system breaking their boundaries and undoing their established imaginations. But this is not about stats; it’s about the Holy Spirit. In God’s great, capacious story we should recognize that this disrupting, with all its attendant confusion, is the way the Spirit of God invites these systems into the place where new imagination breaks forth.
End or death of these denominations? Not for a minute! The problem with the prognosticators is that they’re driven by stats and straight line thinking not by a theological imagination. God is up to something in these denominations. Gestating among them in younger leaders and many, many good leaders across the system is a new imagination. Innovation and transformation hardly ever comes from what we call the ‘top’ but this doesn’t mean nothing is happening. It is! last week I was with some twenty four mid-level judicatory execs in the eastern US. They are leaders in one of these so-called dying denominations. What struck me is that these leaders get that the system is in crisis; they get that they are past easy fixes or one more model and program brought in from the outside. Forming, churning, gestating in them is something else – a sense that God is not finished with their church and they are ready to be engaged in figuring out this new future the Spirit is forming. Just this week I spoke with another group of leaders from a different mainline church. They also know the problems and issues. These are good, intelligent people and they understand God is forming something radically new inside their DNA. Don’t count these groups out. When I read the Scripture I keep being confronted by the reality that the very places we are ready to declare dead, of no future value, are the very places where God’s future breaks forth. If Holy Week and Easter Sunday mean anything surely it is that this is the way God works in our world. Hold on – the old dowagers are not done yet!
Last weekend I was in Denver with a group of pastors and lay leaders from some seven congregations in the PC USA (I think it qualifies for one of those main denominations the stats obsessed have marked for the palliative care unit of the church). I was energized by the imagination that catalyzed among these people. How else can I express it but to say many of these people get that the church needs to be transformed and if you were in that room Saturday afternoon you’d know that this is precisely what the Spirit is already up to among them. I was so struck by the way the imagination for a new future is among these people because I saw it among them. Does it take work? Of course! Will it require sacrifice and change? Undoubtedly! Below is a picture of the Denver group. I just love the bunch of them! Forget the prognosticators; turn away from the rancor. The God who raised Jesus from the dead knows nothing of straight line thinking or false polarities. A whole different narrative is at work here. How have we managed to forget Holy Week and Easter?
