What is our Mission?

The visioning team met Monday night to consider the question ‘What is our mission?’ and to consider the challenges and opportunities facing us. In the absence of a formal mission statement for the church, we have written this one as a descriptor of who Broadus is today:

“Broadus is a Christ-centered community of faith committed to warm-hearted fellowship, thoughtful inquiry and discipleship, and ministry in the name of Christ. We strive to support each other as together we celebrate our new life in Christ and share this life with others."

We do not meant to suggest that this is the mission statement for the church as we go forward, but it’s our starting place. It’s intended to be descriptive rather than proscriptive. So, as we move through the rest of the process this statement will be revisited, but for now we think it’s a pretty encouraging and biblical description of what a church should be about and what we think Broadus is about. . . .I will be away next week visiting my folks in Texas. Elizabeth Bartley will lead the Wednesday Bible Study and I will be back in worship by the next Sunday.

Worst church sign ever?

How's this for a welcome to church?

Thanks to www.myfourwalls.net for this . . .if 'thanks' is the right word.

Emergent/ Mainline Conversation

It's Thursday morning in an icy and rainy Atlanta.  This is the last morning of the conference hosted by Columbia Presbyterian Seminary (a beautiful place) that is a conversation between Emergent and Mainline folk.  Ok, so who are these people?  Emergent folk are pretty well described by earlier posts, so please check those out including the good article in Christianity today.  But, to be more specific, the people who are actually here representing this diverse collection of leaders are from Atlanta, the host city and from Solomon's Porch, which is a church in Minneapolis, MN.  Brian McLaren is also here.  He's from suburban DC in Maryland, and he is the public face of emergent for most people, having written Generous Orthodoxy and A New Kind of Chrisitian.  McLaren was named by Time magazine a few years ago as one of the 25 most influential evangelical leaders in America.  I have enjoyed several good conversations with a couple of these folks where I got to pick their brains and listen to their stories.  It's been fun, encouraging, at times confusing, and more than a little frustrating.  If you don't have any other handle, think of emergent as the people who are following Jesus outside of traditional Christian churches.  It's people who are comfortable in a post-modern world.  When a post-modern has a question about something, she googles wikipedia to see what the wikipedia community has to say and maybe adds a comment of her own or blogs about the tension she feels between the 'answers' given and what she senses in her own heart.

 

What is mainline?  Mainline is the term used to describe people following Jesus in exactly traditional Christian churches.  It's the people who enjoyed being the cultural elite and still do to some extent.  It's the people you can trust, the big church on the corner with the big steeple, the bricks, the programs, the pastor who writes the weekly devotional for the local paper.  It's the church with people who wear suits and dresses, go to Sunday School, and who are proud when its their pastor who is asked to give the invocation at the high school football game.  It's Episcopalian, Presbyterians, Methodists, and some Baptists.  An argument can be made that while Baptists tend to be more conservative than most of the mainline denominations, they are the 'mainline' church of the South.  It's people who are comfortable in a modern world.  When a modern person has a question, he pulls his encyclopedia britannica off the shelf to find the answer from the expert and replaces it on the shelf satisfied that he has been enlightened.

 

Much more could be said about both groups, but moving on . . .this has been an interesting week.  I wanted to find out what emergent was all about.  What is most obvious are the worship practices.  These vary widely, but they are anything and everything but 3 hymns, an offering, and a didactic sermon from a suit.  Some of their practices are really compelling, others seem weird, but I can mostly respect the desire to engage God in different ways.  But don't get caught in thinking this is just about doing worship differently or creatively.  That's just part of a new generation.  What's really at stake is the location of authority and activity for and in the congregation.  In emergent there is a very high appreciation for the role of the individual in shaping group discernment.  Theology is not handed down either from a pastor or from history.  The ancient creeds are a 'conversation partner' not a determinative force.  The pastor is a thought leader, but his/her thoughts are not necessarily normative for any particular person in the group.  They are comfortable with this tension. 

 

If this sounds familiar, it probably should.  Seems to me that baptists like John Smyth and Thomas Helwys were the 'emergent's of the early 1600s.  Their forms rejected highly structured, but spiritually empty forms.  Their ecclesiology returned authority to the laity through their understanding of priesthood of the believer.  Their theology would be described as confessional rather than creedal--boiling up from the shared discernment of the gathered community.  And, like emergents, they were considered 'nuts'.  And they were.  John Smyth baptized himself one time.  Very strange people.  But they had an itch that couldn't be scratched in the religion that was handed down and prevalent in their society. 

 

I think that a lot can be said about the parallels between emergents and the formation of the CBF.  I follow Jake Myers in this assertion.  These two groups do actually have a lot in common, even though they are saying it in very different ways. 

 

I also think Broadus is trying to scratch some of the same itches.  I'm certain that Broadus folk would struggle with a lot of what these emergent folks are all about, but there is more in common that you might think.  We have something to learn from these folk and maybe something to add, which is a delightful conclusion when you look at the age of our congregation and the age of these folks.  It's encouraging to think that we are pointing in the same directions, toward a post-modern future which looks very different from the hierarchical structures of the past. 

 

I'll write more about this later. . .the key words of this movement seem to be: intentional, missional, gathering, conversation, friendship, post-modern, and generous.  Enough for now.  If you can help refine any of my definitions, please do.  I welcome your comments and questions. 

Dreama in the Czech Republic

One of our Broadus friends, Dreama Montrief is in the Czech Republic this semester taking classes and will continue through the summer working with a church.  You can czech out her blog: www.dreamalynnintheczech.blogspot.com.

Emerging/ Emergent: What's it mean?

Here is a good article from Christianity Today's "CT Direct" email that gives insight into the emerging church movement and it's formal Emergent organization.  I'll be in Atlanta next week at a conference ("conversation") that explores the relationship between mainline churches and these emerging churches and leaders. 

 

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/february/11.35.html

 

While you read the article you may find yourself compelled by some of the characteristics of the movement and you may find yourself repelled by others.  I think that one of the hallmarks of this movement is its generosity toward those with whom there are disagreements.  This is the same generosity that the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (www.thefellowship.info) strives to engender and what marks a distinct and clear shift from the Southern Baptist Convention's (www.sbc.net) approach over the last 25 years.  While the CBF 'assemblies' and Emergent 'gatherings' look somewhat, um, different (hair color; suits vs. tshirts; CBF logo tatoos, anyone?), I can't help but be excited about the possibilities of conversation between two groups of folks who are not just 'reacting' but find themselves exploring what it means to be Christ-followers without the denominational superstructures of a generation-past to both guide and limit their creativity, their embrace of the gospel, and their ministry in a variety of local settings.  We may find that these two groups have more in common than we might have assumed. 

 

 

Mainline Emergent/s

One of the ways the Broadus congregation has supported me is through your provision for my participation in the Sustaining Pastoral Excellence Program.  Two years ago, 30 pastors under the age of 35 were selected from five states to be a part of a three year program designed to help us become effective ministers.  One of the benefits of the program is a $5000 grant each of us can use to help us achieve our learning goals.  The grants must be used by the end of 2007.  So, next Tuesday-Thursday, I will be in Atlanta at Columbia Theological Seminary, using the grant to pursue my goal of becoming more familiar with the 'emergent church' movement.  The movement is described as a "growing, generative friendship among missional Christians seeking to love our world in the Spirit of Jesus Christ."  What's behind the brief description is a wide variety of worship expressions, theological persuasions, and ecclesial organizations that share in common an awareness that post-modernity is calling for new and varied expressions of faith in Christ to reach people with the gospel.  The conference next week is called "Mainline Emergent/s: Conversations in Theology, Practice, and Hope."  It is organized around the question, "How can mainline congregations be a part of—and inform the conversation about—the emergent church?"  You can see www.emergentvillage.com for more information or check back here for updates and reviews of this conference.  Thank you at Broadus for helping make this kind of experience possible for me.   

The 5 Questions: Part 1

Broadus, as you may know, is about to go through a visioning process based on Peter Drucker's "5 Most Important Questions".  It's a business model and some of that makes us a bit uncomfortable, but we'll work through it and make it work for a church setting whose goal is not just to bring in more customers to make more profit, but to be a community whose life together is a faithful witness to one another and our world.

 

So Peter Drucker crafted 5 Questions that an organization must ask.  The first question is "What is our Mission?"  Subquestions are: Whawt is the current mission?  What are our challenges?  What are our opportunities?  Does the mission need to be restated?

 

These aren't always easy questions, even the first question.  I don't know that we've ever really articulated a 'mission statement'.  Even if we had, so many organizations' mission statements don't really reflect the REAL mission of the organization.  Some do.  Some don't. 

 

But this is where we'll begin.  With defining our mission as it best describes us now, taking that mission through our challenges and opportunities and then determining whether the mission needs to be restated.  We hope to have addressed these questions by the end of February.  If you have any thoughts, we'd love to hear them.

On Visioning

Our church is about to begin an intensive process of defining, articulating, and then determining how to live in to, a vision. It's not quite fair to say we are just now beginning.  For the last 3 months, 24 people have been in prayer and share triplets, meeting weekly to pray for one another and the church and discuss the church and its ministries and so forth.  So we've been sort of doing this for a while.

 

But now we are really starting the process.  Glenn Akins (with the Virginia Baptists) will be helping us, but we all know that we have to do the work ourselves.

 

What is a vision?  Visions come cheap nowadays. Pat Robertson says that God told him that America would be stuck by a terrible terrorist attack in 2007.  God apparently wasn't specific about what kind of attack, but that one would happen.  Thanks Pat.  It reminds me of the televangelist Oral Roberts who, if my memory serves me correctly, told his people several years ago that he would die if they didn't contribue $7 million to his university or hospital or something.  They did.  And he's still kicking I suppose. 

 

I don't think this is the kind of stuff we think of when we think of a vision.  We mean a shared sense of identity, a common sense of direction and purpose, and an intentionality about coming to these decisions. 

 

All that may not sound exciting.  But it can be.  If we listen well to one another and to God and if we dream well about our future and God's plans, we will move closer to being the church God dreams for us to be.  That's exciting to me.

Four good books

 

Here are four good books:

 

Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller.  It's a sometimes irreverent, but spiritual and 'real' approach to Christianity from someone searching for a genuine experience and expression of Christianity.

 

God's Politics: Why the Right Gets it Wrong, and the Left Doesn't Get it, Jim Wallis.  Jim pushes past liberal/ conservative dichotomies to find the message of the Gospel and how it speaks to current challenges we face as a nation.  I particularly like the way Jim challenges the way the church has allowed itself to be co-opted by political parties and calls us to remember the lessons Jesus taught.

 

Simply Christian.  NT Wright.  Sort of in the tradition of CS Lewis' Mere Christianity, Wright tries to get us to the core of what it means to be a Christian.  I think he does a remarkable job of thoughtfully and powerfully articulating his own experience and the gospel.

 

A Generous Orthodoxy, Brian McLaren.  If you are familiar with the emergent movement, you've heard of McLaren.  You may have heard of him anyway.  This book, very much like the prior three, comes at Christianity from a little different perspective.  McLaren celebrates the best from many strands of Christianity, and compels his readers to be open to new ways of thinking and particularly living the Gospel.

 

Happy reading.  Please let me know if you read one of these and what you think are good books.

To Celebrate . . .Or Not

 

New Year's Eve has come and gone again.  And it's kind of the same thing every year you know.  The indelible image of New Year's is that big ball dropping in New York, high above the throngs of people who have been standing there since the early morning for just that moment.  They look like they are having fun.  Most of the rest of us are in our homes or that of a friend, by midnight watching these people have fun on our televisions.  It's sort of fun.  Right?  Actually, it is, if you can make yourself stay up that late.  (Man, I'm starting to sound old.)  But it does become kind of a sport to see if you can stay up to watch it.  But when you do, you are glad you did, especially when your infant sleeps in a little later the next morning (Thanks Lily!)

 

So, this new year's got me thinking about celebrating stuff like that--actually meaningless things.  I mean Christmas and Easter have substance to them.  There's something to celebrate, but New Year's is kind of a made-up party.  It got me thinking that there are two kinds of people.  People who look for reasons not to celebrate and those that look for any excuse to celebrate.

 

The first kind of person looks at Christmas and says, "What's all the fuss?"  They look at New Year's and say, "It's just a date on the calendar."  They look at birthdays and say, "No big deal.  Just one more day older."  And on and on.  American Protestantism lends itself to this worldview.  Life is austere.  Nothing really to get too excited about.  Besides I've got to work tomorrow.

 

The other kind of person, quite differently, looks for any excuse to celebrate.  Christmas lights are a pain?  Well, you only hang them once a year, so here's another strand.  New Year's--let's go out to dinner.  Why?  "Why not?"  It's your birthday?  Great.  Eat more cake!  You can run it off later.

 

I don't want to make too much of it, but people do generally seem to fall in these categories.  Seems kind of like Jesus was the second kind of person.  Maybe I'm stretching here, but water into wine is kind of a big, unnecessary miracle.  Really?  This is your coming out party?  It couldn't be giving sight to the blind? deaf to the hearing? ability to walk to a lame person?  Nope.  Water to wine.  At a party.  

 

Hmm. Happy New Year!