Our biggest challenge; Is Anyone Listening? As We go gently into that good night

Some very important recent words from church leader Bill Easum (my commentary to come, but in essence it is that he is 100 percent right, and this, reproducing leaders who will reproduce leaders, disciples, missionaries, planters of "churches" in many forms, is the most difficult thing for progressives/liberals to do, at least in my own experience it has been; but a first step is just to get into the new default mode way of thinking about growth, about churches, about planting. Which brings me to the annual General Assembly watch: is any of this conversation going to happen? Keep me posted.):

From Easum recently:
>We are witnessing the birth of two huge movements -Church Planting Centers in churches and Multi Site Congregations. For the purpose of this section I want to focus on the Church Planting Centers.

Over the past decade, a number of churches have initiated the beginnings of what could become one of the most significant movements in church history since the Reformation. I am running into multiple churches that have established church planting centers within them and have staffed their center with a full time person in charge of raising-up church planters who will develop their own church planting center. The goal of these churches is not planting churches; their goal is planting churches that will develop a church planting center within them. Some of these churches are planting dozens of churches each year and are the Grandparents of hundreds of congregations. One congregation I attend now and then has a goal of planting one hundred churches over the next ten years and, at the end of the decade, bringing together over a hundred thousand people for a great celebration.

It has been a long time in Protestantism since we have seen the number of church plants as we are seeing today. I read somewhere recently that over the past decade, thirteen of these church planting churches account for more church plants than all other denominations combined. Whether that is fact or fiction, the fact that the story is circulating tells us that something is afoot, and perhaps more of us should pay attention.

Phase One:
A vision for church planting is born in the heart of a leader or group of leaders. In time, a “leader of leaders” emerges to lead the movement. This leader gains authority, not by position or power, but by his or her passion and dedication to the vision. Because of the passion, innovation, persuasiveness and ability of this individual to attract other leaders of leaders, the movement catches fire and rapidly spreads - much like an out-of-control wildfire advances unabated through a forest.
In the early stages of the movement, church planters have direct contact with the founder of the movement.

But Phase Two brings a new twist. Over time, the leader of leaders becomes less available to the core leaders due to the growing number of church plants and the increasing organizational demands. Therefore, the movement begins to align the church planters around the DNA of the movement more than the passion of the leader of the movement. Church planters emerge who know not the founder. They know the stories, but they missed the passion that ignited the movement. At this point, the person in charge of the church planting center attempts to fill the void and convey the passion of the founder.

Somewhere between Phase One and Phase Two, it is not unusual for the founder to assume the mantle of Apostle, and begin to spend less and less time at the Mother church. Such a response is both natural and necessary in order to keep the passion of the founder at the heart of the movement.

Phase Three:
But no matter how hard the founder tries, the decentralization of his or her passion continues to grow as the movement explodes. Because of the exponential multiplication of congregations and church planting centers, the movement can no longer rely on the intense presence and passion of either the founder or even the point person from the original church planting center to model the DNA to the core group of church planters. At this point, the leaders can no longer assume that all of the church plants will live out the DNA.

The movement begins to break down and, if it is not careful, it responds by establishing a centralized board with paid staff in an attempt to insure predictable corporate behavior among the church plants. At the very best, the board is for policy governance. At worst, it is dedicated to the management of both the DNA and the individual churches. Either way, the establishment of a board signals the beginning of the decline for the movement and the beginning of an institution. Because of this shift from mission to maintenance, church planters begin to focus more on planting churches than establishing churches that develop church planting centers within them.

If the leaders are not careful, management replaces mission as both the leader of leaders and board are drawn increasingly into the management of the movement. More time is spent managing the movement than fueling the movement. What were once free wheeling “mission outposts” with a common DNA have now become disconnected “management silos.” Even more deadly, boards and institutions require standardization and shun innovation. Management silos require predictability, and the movement loses its edge. At this point, the movement responds by developing quality control systems and attempts to centralize authority. Now, instead of authority arising out of the passion of the leader, it is required by the Board. Quest for quality now fills the void once occupied by innovation, thus encouraging standardization of methodology. Staff behaves more like professionals than artists.

Phase Four:
Centralized and removed from the field, executive management becomes paralyzed. It lacks credibility and is not sensitive to the rapidly changing mission field, and survival of the organization or institution becomes the goal. Now church planters are building churches rather than being part of a movement, and church planting slows to a trickle. Executives at the top or center feel isolated, and the movement is virtually dead.

The Big Question for Church Planting Movement Leaders is: "What are you doing to avoid moving from Phase Two to Phase Three or, better yet, to remain in Phase One? What are you going to do to insure the continuation of the movement?" What I fear is that the third and fourth generation of church planters is most likely going to focus on building a church rather than facilitating a movement. This shift cannot be allowed to happen! Too much is at stake.

To answer this question, we turn to the first church planting movement - the missionary trips of Paul. What did he do to insure the movement would continue?
First, he stayed in close contact with the churches he planted. This was a chore in his day. What avenues are you using to personally stay in touch with all of the leaders of leaders in your movement? In some areas of the world, it is simple through the internet and email.
Second, he visited and revisited the church plants. There is nothing that can compare to experiencing the passion of the leader of leaders.
How will you achieve these first two points? Let me suggest that you focus on planting churches that agree to establish a church planting system as part of their DNA. And then bring these leaders of leaders together every year to spend a week or month with the founder. Paul continually gathered a core team around him and trained them to be leaders of leaders.
Who is in your stable of leaders of leaders? Are you raising them up for that purpose? This is your primary task. Imprint the DNA in the lives of those who are leading church planting centers. Focus on them, not on the planting of churches. In time, one of them will replace you.
The movement does not need a board; it needs a group of leaders of leaders to form an “apostolic team.” This is the team that becomes the “leaders of leaders.” Instead of the movement depending on the passion of a leader of leaders, a core group of passionate vision casters of the movement’s DNA are scattered about so that every plant is visited annually. This is the primary way to deal with the loss of the movement’s founder.

Are you reproducing yourself? Doing so is more important to your movement than the planting of churches.<

Anti-Planting Attitudes, and More

Following up on the post below, here are some items lifted from the special Net Results issue on church planting.

From George Bullard's radical church planting letter: You've got to move away from anti-church planting attitudes such as:

--We cannot start new congregations because of all the empty seats we have in existing congregations. Fill up our churches first and then we can start new congregations....because they may take away some of our members, particularly those who no longer live close to our church...because they will compete with us for new members. We have at least one family from every neighborhood within three miles of our church. So we are reaching those neighborhoods.

---Our denominational region plans to start about one new congregation every three to five years now. That is a great improvement over the past when we started a new congregation about every five to seven years....starting new is too expensive to start too many of them. We have to hire a pastor-developer and pay that salary. We have to buy land. We have to build the first building. With all that investment we are lucky to be able to start one church every five years....we hve to make sure they are started right, so we have to go slowly and deliberately to guide them appropriately and make sure they understand the principles of faithfulness.

---We are not a rich region. we cannot put together the large amount of money needed to start a new congregation. We tried a capital fund campaign several years ago for it and it failed. It is more important for the denominational staff to work with churches that are plateaued and declining and need renewal. They have been paying their dues in money and service to the denomination and deserve more than a new congregation. Church planters must be approved by our denomination. Too few candidates exist. Our seminaries do not emphasize it and there must be good reasons for this.



Denominations tend to have three attitudes about church planting, with varying results.

1. If there is a "Church planting initiative" in your denomination, then among the various things the denomination does is to seek to plant churches. (instead of its being the denomination's reason for being. Think what a change that would mean). Those who adopt initiative-mindsets rely on the denomination to start churches at least 80 percent of the time. Often the starts come from split-offs. With this mindset you might get new congregations coming into existence each year that is equal to or less than 1 percent of the churches already in existence. This is where the UUA is, at best.

2. If there is a "Church planting strategy" denominations focus their activities on making it a core value through training of leaders, marketing it as a sell to local churches. After 10 years of sustained attention you will see changes in the church culture. At first some easy to launch churches will start where people have been waiting for support; then next some existing churches will begin to start the process; the final part of that first ten years the new congregations themselves will begin to look to becoming partners and sponsors of other new ones. If the denomination seeks to control the church planting efforts of the newer congregations, there will be some incremental increases in new church plants each year moreso than those with the initiative mind-set. If they don't seek to control the newly-planted churches, then the third mind-set might take hold.

3. If there is a "church planting movement" mind-set, it is radically different from what currently exists. It can't be directly initiated from the denomination, but must be grassroots (but denominational seeding of such grassroots culture can help). You pull together pastors and leaders who have been engaged in it and challenging them to take it to new level. Accountability should be by planting peers and not denominational officials. It can't accept too many external resources. It happens when people live the truth that "the natural reproduction of congregations that begins to occur in the midst of a spiritual environment where new congregations of all types are seen as the best way to extend and expand the kingdom of God. It is a spiritual movement more than it is a strategic plan....Leaders are from the grassroots...It is tough to put a ceiling on how much growth in congregations can take place through a church planting movement." Growth of a minimum of 5 percent each year in the number of new congregations within a collection of congregations is a beginning point."

Here is an example of a beginning church planting movement: Go to The Northwoods Story:Go to http://www.northwoodchurch.org.
It is an oft-repeated story. Northwoods started out to do big mega-church but decided to spread out instead. Still have 2,000 at original site but have 30,000 through 80 congregations started instead. Starting 15 new ones per year. It's about having a "kingdom" perspective, not institutional organizational perspective. Funny how we progressives so often don't translate our community-minded "kingdom" social gospel approach into planting in the same spirit. Maybe there is something safe about having church as a safe place to retreat to in between our forays into making the world a better place, but if we truly want to do it we need to turn things inside out and re-create the church as kingdom-work.

From Bob Roberts from Northwood: "Every church member seen as a church planter." I love it. Changes everything. Need to start instilling that. Once you get your mind around that, it makes missional and incarnational and relational church planting more understandable. Note what this does to membership expectations.

---" Powerful, personal worship is key." Here is another paradigm portal. A real controversial place of pushing the ecclesia. See earlier posts about worship. How often does our image and addiction to "corporate worship" and size in worship prevent us from doing the real prayerful spiritual work that is needed and that would lead us to being missionaries wherever we are? Can people envision church without worship as they are used to it? Small group worship and even two to three prayer groups and even personal prayer time, immersing in music, silence, nature, scripture, singing to God by yourself, engaging in art deeply, all this can be meaningful worship that drives us to create communities and relationships, instead of the regular Sunday worship event trapping us from doing so.

The Disciples of Christ vision was to start 100 new congregations a year, 1000 in 1000 different ways. So far after five years they have close to 450 new congregations. They are supporting their planters with training, grants, global experiences. Healthy church planters start healthy congregations. Everyone is coupled with a mentoring coach. ---From Ed Stetzer: Churches start churches. He has a list of 72 church planting organizations. this is a new phenomenon of the past 20 years, and more recently within that time frame....You can, and denominations do, pour millions into churches that are broken. Revitalizing existing churches is a great idea, but no one has been able to do that. We need to help churches transform, but we need to start new ones too. And we need to do it not just with "good people" who stand in front of other good people and tell them how to be good, to quote Mark Twain. Stetzer says for forty years we have made the church better, spruced up buildings, spiced up worship, made sermons practical, and the culture is "more lost" and people who go to church are less committed.

--From Ronny Russell: an oldie but goodie--if someone comes to a church leader with an idea and passion for a new ministry how many hoops will they have to jump through? (If I was in search that would be the basis of my first question to folks looking for a new minister)....Church can become like little bands of disciples going about Galillee and Judea following Jesus. Others will see and hear and want to join.

---From Tom Bandy.: Who cares if your church exists? (another good search question.) but better yet, Does God care it exists? Stop talking lovingly amongst yourself and talk more lovingly among strangers. The codependency between laity and clergy is the most significant block to mission growth. 1. Take away money from institutional maintenance and put it into relevant programs for the public. Don't stop with programs, but with programs that lead to conversations in the community. Be a mentor to those in community in need. Have a single signature ministry in the zip code.

Church Planting 101

This round up of posts from the blog over the past four years relates not to missional organic incarnational church per se, or what we are still becoming here, especially as we begin conversation and discernment on a new manifestation of our mission connected to moving, it is hoped, into the risk of our own bigger space that is in fact an old church building. But simply relates to the new contexts for those seeking to plant churches that are in the basic mode of church as it was in the 1960 to 2000 era. Pretty much it boils down to the one question: what outcome are you seeking to create?

Recreating new churches that are pretty similar to existing churches is not wrong; you meet people where they are, in many ways, and missional organic church isn't where a lot of people are who want to start a new church (though the process of trying to do that, lol, might turn a lot of them into missional organic church folks), but with the alignment of leadership, culture, and resources obviously it is still being done and can be done. Just know what you are up against, and what outcome you are seeking to create. In other words, is your goal to increase the number of church members by a certain amount in a given area over the next five, ten, twenty years, and have a paid minister? And how much are you willing to spend to achieve that? Or is it another outcome that will shape what you do?

At the General Assembly 2010 in Minneapolis, there were three of us church planters in a workshop: Joel Miller who had been with two plants and is in Buffalo now; myself with two plants including the current one; and David Owen-O'Quill who is planting at and through Micah's Porch in Chicago. You can order the CD of that workshop by going to the http://www.softconference.com/uua/slist.asp?C=3556 site and looking for Friday program 3014, Turning Your Congregation Inside Out: Growing Missional Communities.

1.
http://progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com/2008/07/questions-id-ask.html
From 2008, a post on what I ask people who ask me about church planting.

2.
http://progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com/2006/05/initial-questions.html
More questions from an earlier post, from 2006, along with responses I gave from back then, but gets to the heart of what questions to first ask before beginning church planting, from a conversation I had with a church that was starting up (It has since folded, due to the default mode of church it chose and the difficulty aligning leadership, culture, and resources.)

3.
http://progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com/2006/06/dozen-plant-and-growth-in-general.html
Above is the link from way back in 2006 about what I had learned by trial and error back then, having tried to start a modern church in a postmodern culture, a grassroots parachute drop into a fast growing suburb, thinking that having a theological niche would triumph. The link explains all the reasons it doesn't.

It is all about the alignment of Leadership, Culture, and Resources, as described in the post and others over the years here.

4.
Here is wisdom gleaned over the years from Bill Easum put into one good long powerpoint. especially for denominational officials or anyone trying to do an attractional traditional church start. You can get to it and commentary at http://progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com/2010/05/go-here-if-you-are-interested-in-church.html

5.
http://progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com/2008/04/our-biggest-challenge-is-anyone.html
And more from Easum on one of the two great movements within churches growing today, circa 2008 when I wrote this post: Church Planting Centers within Churches, and multi site congregations. This post focuses on church planting centers within churches.

6.
http://progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com/2010/10/reprise-of-uu-church-growth-posts.html
Related to church planting but more widespread, creating a culture perhaps in which church planting might grow more organically among us, is the subject of these link in the post above that capture the UU church growth conversations in May in Denver.

The initial questions

I am going to visit this weekend with a group in another city interested in forming a new Unitarian Universalist church. I have done this a lot over the years in this general area and mostly now I regret, in hindsight, the advice I've given. In fact a couple of years ago I gave a talk about Growth called "Unlearning Church" (title from Michael Slaughter's book) as a way of kind of repenting of how I had "helped" groups in the past. That's because mostly I focused on the how and the organizational ways to get up and going and growing; mostly I focused with them on "how to grow A church" instead of how to begin in their area a growing movement of churches, a church that will have as its ultimate measure of success how many and how often and how soon and how diverse from itself can be the churches its starts, and how deeply it can affect lives and its community, making disciples of love and justice.

Some of the questions I mistakenly dealt with were: Should we get a minister first or a building? Should we advertise, and where? How many members does it take to be official, and how do we get them and keep them?

These days I do it a little differently. For example, here is the outline I am working on for this weekend's visit.

Hymn Sing: A Church Planting Narrative in Song
We start by singing together, a community act, something that builds spirit and exposes vulnerability. All movements should sing or die. And this arrangement of hymns from the Singing The Living Tradition hymnal moves from welcome, to personal centering, to community centering, to mission, to disappointment, to deeper community, to hope.

188—Come, Come, whoever you are
389—Gathered Here
123—Spirit of Life
131—Love Will Guide Us
121—We’ll Build A Land
168—One More Step
352—Find A Stillness
205—Amazing Grace
116—I’m On My Way

And then these are the questions that I think now we need to grapple with as we begin our efforts--

A Few of the Initial Questions For Church Planting

What is your "default mode" for “church”? What mental image comes to your mind? Why? What mental images might come to the mind of someone different from you who doesn’t go to church? How limiting is our own perspective?

What has to exist for a church to exist? Hint: The church doesn't have a mission; the mission has a church. And the church is more than the contemporary congregation of bodies who have the power to vote. More on this in a later post, in particular reference to Conrad Wright's writings.

How many UU churches do you want in your area? One church in one way in one geographical area is a warning sign of impending death. Like so many of the usual questions, when we think about starting "A" church, this turns into starting a church for me and my wants and my tastes and my needs. Like the previous question, the answer to this question determines our DNA and how healthy we will grow.

How will you determine and protect and spread your “DNA”, your Mission, Vision, and Values? Will a committee decide it? Or will someone or some two people who have a gift and finger on the pulse of both the forming church and the Church Universal and the free church tradition within it, be moved to help name it? How will these days determine how much of a permission-giving church culture there will be? Will it be a mission statement or a song in the heart, a story? What will be your creation story? Can you sum up your aims in less than 8 syllables? Will you be able to say that while you welcome all, you won't and can't be "for" all, in the sense that you won't be the right church for all looking for a church? Trying for one group to be all things for all people is a recipe for discord and death. And will you have the guts to create a safe place to take risks? To say no to unhealthy behaviors? New churches often are magnets for people who have not found a home for their behaviors in other churches and seek out the new, needy, church plants as vulnerable places--just as new churches will be magnets for those healthy people who have left for good reasons unhealthy churches. How will your leadership circle become an accountability group to keep on track with the MVV?

Which model of church planting will you use, and why?
Don't rush into assuming only one model. Know the strengths and weaknesses of each model. In the UUA report on Pathways Church in Dallas/Fort Worth area, several of these models were listed. The report itself is good for conversation and I will pick up on it in a later thread. You can read it at http://www.uua.org/TRUS/apr06/B3a-pathways.pdf. The main models listed in the report are:
Pioneer/Parachute: Starting from scratch in a new location or for new group
Adopting/Affiliation: Embracing groups who approach the denomination
Propagating: Multiplying network of cell groups: 12x12
Daughtering: Halving off a core group from a parent church
Satellite: an existing church starts an off-site worship
Partnering: A cooperative venture between several churches
Mission developer: A developer goes into an area and starts congregations
Transplanting: Selling and relocating a church to begin a new church
Nesting: Hosting a congregation within an existing congregation
Restart: Take over a new church and start in the same site with new leadership
Conference/District/National start: begins with initiative from outside target area

Under the propagating model there are many varieties, it should be said.

I will say that underlying some issues about what kind of church people want to start are some issues of class and acceptance (a church should look and act like other churches so my neighbors won't judge me, e.g. and "be respectful") and these should be acknowledged and addressed up front. Get a control on them so they don't control the church.

One of the key questions is also about the relationship of a church planting team and a minister? Is any seminary trained person capable of being a church planter? No. Especially since so many progressive seminaries don't pay attention to church planting. The ordained will have some skills that non-ordained don't but they will sometimes lack key skills that others in the group might have or need to find. Granting lots of responsibility and authority to those with gifts for different facets will be key. There are advantages to having a strong presence of a church planter and leadership team right from the start, but the strong presence of clergy can also help create clergy-focus instead of mission-focus and kill the plant. If the minister isn't a strong DNA-setting church planter, with lots of authority granted by the team, the best connection might be in the form of coaching or mentoring or assuming certain functions, like spiritual director to the leadership team, while the team continues to develop and deepen and be the more visible leadership face.

A Few of the Initial Tips For Church Planting

Put On Your Own Oxygen Mask First---planters, lay and clergy, should have their emotional, spiritual, physical house in order before starting on this major undertaking, even moreso I think than in other ministry positions with existing churches. Perfect never exists so don't strive for it, but don't be under major stress and transitions. If you have to turn more and more inward for your own health, it will create inward-turning as a norm of the church.

Do Everything As A Team of Two or More--Actually two is a very good number to take on whatever tasks there are, but one isn't. Sets a bad precedent, and even if there is one person with the passion and skills that you want to encourage to turn loose in permission-giving culture, a partner to check in with and meet with and turn to is still going to help prevent burnout and going beyond value boundaries.

Know Yourself and Others on The Team---encourage all church planters/teams to do Myers-Briggs, Enneagram, conflict styles profiling. Share results. Test them out by experiencing something together as a team and reflecting on it.

Practice Embracing Healthy Conflict and Small Group Dynamics--This comes with knowing yourself and others and you can use the differences in temperament and style to talk about how that leads us to need guidelines for how to interact with one another (use I statements, etc.) and setting behavior boundaries. Along with this as a leadership team building I would right away get the group reading and reflecting on the book Friedman's Fables and the principles in Generation to Generation, family systems theory.

Know Your Community and Let Your Community Know You--obviously getting a Precept psychographic study of the area, as well as talking with people about the biggest needs of the area, know its history, its players, and who all aren't going to church already and why. Then engage in servant evangelism (www.kindness.com) and random acts of kindness and look for ways your group can find a niche of addressing those needs. I would rather people first encounter the church plant out in the world doing things rather than trying to get people "into the church" to become a part of it. I will post more about the role of worship in mission and church plants, but the first place people get to know you will also set your DNA and your future. Those who join from seeing you in mission are more apt to help keep that mission and sense of the church outside itself going. Energy needs to be directed there, moreso than what happens when people gather for worship, which is why worship needs to be understood differently and, as it is commonly conceived, delayed as much as possible. Question that comes from a newcomer after visiting with a church planter during a mission project or party or just a good conversation: When does your church meet? Answer: It just did.

Learn From Others/Be Coached so you can Coach. Go to boot camp somehow if possible. At least immerse in online communities, visiting church starts, bringing in church planters, read through a book together on planting and emerging church.

Some general places to begin:
Build Personal Relationships and tap into your extended field of family and friends. Invite them to be with you and your group as it---
Parties. Takes trips. Shares spiritual passions. Studies. Sings. Cares for one another. Does acts of kindness for strangers. Covenants and Celebrates to keep the spirit of community alive and growing. (if you have to feel like you are doing something "worshippy" do it as a small group event for those already a part of you, to celebrate what and why you are doing what you are doing, get your main morale boosts in other ways, but keep worship informal at this stage; same goes for bylaws. Just do articles of incorporation for non-profit status and setting up bank account; if for some reason you need bylaws keep them very vague and flexible at this stage; you don't want to have to revise them, spend energy on them, refer to them, or else DNA will be organizational instead of organic, maintenance instead of mission.)

Make sure that topics of buildings, budgets, bylaws, and staff, all the structural stuff, comes along to support the Spirit and Mission, not the other way around. Don’t rush. Keep anxiety out of your system. Laugh lots. Beware premature birth, burnout, controlling, too much focus on “us”, perfectionism, and the "failure to experiment, risk, and fail."

Hal Taussig's new book a good first step

"A New Spiritual Home: Progressive Christianity at the Grass Roots" by Hal Taussig, pastor and professor, is a good first step in moving liberal Christians toward the emergent and organic and church-planting churches movement necessary for its thriving in the century ahead.

The thrust of the book is about the new momentum for churches with a progressive Christian core, and for associations connected with progressive Christianity (except for the one I am most connected with, the Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship, founded in 1945, a long time before many of these other progressive Christian associations, but since we hang out in covenant with non-Christian Unitarian Universalists, it seems, that or unfamiliarity with us (to our shame), we don't get mentioned. But I digress.

The book is similar in tone to Diana Bass's Christianity for the Rest Of Us (and I am still going to be blogging on it more comparing it with some other recent books), but it goes more into depth into the emergent church movement with a few of the churches profiled. It lists 1,000 progressive churches but profiles sixteen more indepth.

It goes into some analysis of why progressive Christian churches have not been growing, into the decline of the mainline church analysis, and, lo and behold, it actually has a small chapter in it devoted to planting progressive churches (we are still waiting for the whole book on that to be published, complete with ecclesiology and corresponding theology for it).

I have some qualms about what is in here, but right now wanted to say it should be on all the library shelves of those interested in progressive Christianity.

He says progressive churches shouldn't try to get started in rural areas or metro areas under 100,000 people, and that's a good point if you are trying to start "a" progressive Christian church that looks like what people think of as church in the attractional model with building, and minister, etc. No reason why in the organic model you can't start church planting communities of much smaller number just about anywhere, rural or small urban area.

He says you shouldn't try to plant where there already is a progressive Christian church. Not sure about that. I think strength will begat strength, and also help to reach out to micro-church niches of progressive Christians, many of whom don't know they are progressive Christians yet because they aren't Christian yet. They are unchurched or de-churched. Taussig's realism, which is important, is still grounded in the model of "church" as it is.

His other points:
1. focus on participatory worship---good point, part of emergent movement, helps breakaway from church default mode.
2. help people think clearly and analytically--generally not a big fan of that, since I am coming from the uber-sphere of it in Unitarianism, but I am finding out that this is a big draw in my area, helping people see the bible in understandable ways....all of course, for me, as a prelude in helping them encounter it in very poetically and perhaps irrational, mystic ways.
3. advocate for full participation of women and GLBT folks---a no-brainer, otherwise why call yourself either progressive or Christian :)
4. Christianity is not the only or best religion---well, I don't know. Progressive Christians certainly talk about God being found in other religions, and that's good, but a failure to actually state that you think it is the 'best" religion? I don't have any problems with that. I think it is the best, not only for me but for the world, though in its present incarnations it vexes me to no end. I don't have a problem stating that it is the best because I know I don't speak for God, thank God, and my humility and finitude grants me the freedom to nevertheless speak what I think is the best, and to make some judgments.
5. committment to justice and equality--again, a no brainer. but this is particularly because it is where the unchurched and dechurched are.

His don't of planting a progressive church:
1. don't worship as business as usual---excellent
2. do not defend orthodoxy---don't be an anti- negative kind of church, but positive in tone, i think is his point. Good point.
3.do not defend male or heterosexual privilege--again, no brainer.
4. he states the need to have "publcized events."--to the extent that he is referring to events such as "signature events" in a community, this is great advice. If it just turns into publicizing message because there are people out there "looking for you" not so sure it is so sound. Again, the ace in the hole is creating not just "a progressive church" but church-planting churches. Of the ones mentioned in his book, I still didn't see a focus or interest on that among them. It is about finding ways to incarnate and give yourself away, over and over, as a church.

I wish I could take Diana Bass's book which talks about recapturing and updating and owning again many of the ancient traditions of Christian faith as part of progressive Christian churches, but which leaves out except in vague passing, that church planting is one of those most ancient of Christian practices--add in Taussig's book to hers because it explores the increasing influence of the emergent church on progessive Churches in ways that, he says, are making them different from the "liberal mainline" of the 50s and 60s. And then add that final chapter or call to arms about taking the next full step and creating and incarnating church-planting church movements among us that are redefining the image people have of church itself.

Blogposts on UU Big Ideas for Church Planting

Go to Boy in the Bands recent blog http://boyinthebands.com/archives/first-steps-to-a-church-planting-consciousness/and follow links for latest discussion there. I've posted a version of the following at BITB.

"At the risk of it going the way of all the other major initiatives of the UUA that have been the focus of GAs, I still imagine a GA whose theme and plenaries and workshops are highlighted around “Multiplying Your Church” or some other sexier name–also at the risk of the fact that unhealthy churches trying to multiply themselves isn’t healthy--but then who knows what might come out of it anyway?; for so long we have been trying to grow by addition within churches when we should be looking at ways the church can turn itself inside out and upside down in its community. Every church can find a way to multiple itself in some way in its community.
But a GA focused on getting churches to imagine and begin in motion the hundreds of different experimental ways of reproducing themselves would be in itself a major shift. It is something so few if any ever discuss.

Of course having said that about GA, that’s about all I would look (or want) for top-down now. On the other hand, getting the conversation going at conferences like the large church conference and mid-size church conference would help. I would rather the initiative come from the churches taking a lead. One of the problems I think we have had is making more of it than it needs to be (10 point plans and all that), which gets anxiety setting into the system. Why don’t a few churches around the country hold church planting conferences and invite church planters and those interested in it to come and pray, share visions, resources, networks, and build the momentum."

The answer to my own question above---why haven't we done this yet on a large scale? Because we have looked at growth as a program. We have looked at extension as a mission project. When it is something that the church "does" (or not)instead of something the church "is" then "it" (growth, planting, reproduction, survival in days ahead, etc.) becomes just another budget item, something alongside other worthy projects. It is the difference between a church that has a mission, and a mission that has/forms a church.

Look at all of our "mission statements" and "ad promos" of the past (uncommon denomination; a faith for you, etc.); they accentuate some version of "come to us/we are like you" (which means you won't be engaged in transformation within us, and we won't be transformed to go be with you). With this kind of DNA, church planting is and will always be alien. Of course if the UUA tried to come up with a statement in 8 syllables or less that would convey a mission statement that would impel church planting as its reason for being on the deepest spiritual level, something like but better than "Becoming God's Mission in Life" my hunch is that it would get theologically tied-up.

However, on the plus side, we have churches who see themselves as being instruments of a mission, with DNAs that are ripe for reproducing. We need to help turn them loose, so their success is measured in the number of their failed experiments. It is to these churches and leaders that we should turn and say what is holding you back?

My Homage To Phillips Theological Seminary, or How an Ecumenical "Mainline" Seminary Can Be A Fertile Ground For Missional Organic Incarnational Stuff

A few days ago I was part of a panel at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa comprised of alumni from different years since 2001 and faculty discussing the transition years after graduation, how our ministries developed and how we were prepared or not for them, and what we had learned to pass on to those about to graduate. The bulk of it all is worthwhile but isn't the subject of this post. But it got me thinking about how at root all that we are involved with here in our missional organic incarnational way of being the church I learned at PTS. But bear with me first before I get to the what.

That is surprising because if you go to http://www.ptstulsa.edu/ and I hope you will and I hope you will pass it on to anyone interested not only in ministry but in religious and theological education and spiritual formation, and if there you do a search for terms such as missional church, church planting, incarnational church, organic church, you will get directed to zero pages. In this way, Phillips, as a seminary in the tradition of the "mainline" and "liberal" church, is not unusual, as seminaries often take their lead from the churches they are connected with, and as you probably know, particularly if you have read this blog over the years, such churches in general have not put resources into the cutting edge of being church. The fact that seminaries haven't been leading the churches in this arena, as they have in the "thinking" arena of theology and biblical studies, is also not a post for this post...but, ironically, as you will see, it is especially in the areas of theology and biblical studies of a progressive Christian bent that sowed the seeds of all this in me.

If you go to Fuller Theological Seminary's website, for example, church planting search pops up 52 entries; missional church 127 entries; organic church 10 entries; incarnational church 19. At Southern Baptist Theological in Louisville, church planting entries stopped showing at 256 with more possible. If you go to the Unitarian Universalist seminaries, it is much like at Phillips: church planting search at Meadville led to nothing about church planting, and missional church led to an interesting essay by Michael Hogue about the malaise and promise of liberal religion which of course is, in an absent sort of way, of course about the lack of church planting, but it wasn't anywhere directly "about" what we describe as the missional church; at Starr King same as at Phillips the search turned up nothing; the search engines found nothing about the phrases so they broke up the phrase such as incarnational and church in order to find some pages at all.

Do I think the situation needs to be reversed? Definitely Yes. I would love for the ethos to change so that at PTS and ML and SK etc. a search for those phrases would generate hundreds of links. I think the life of the liberal church depends on it. It should automatically go to courses each semester with those titles, or to how these manifestations of church are being intentionally incorporated into the existing courses be they theological, biblical, pastoral, practical, prophetic. The seminary needs to challenge the church to transform itself by giving its self away in the very form of the church, and needs to comfort the church by providing guidance and support as it does so. And there are seeds at work I know, and am sure; they just need to be watered more and perhaps with a sign pointing to their spot in the garden which is, of course, named seminary for what it seeds and plants and grows.

Having said all the above, here is my homage to Phillips in particular, and if what we do here can be germinated there, back when I was there even, then I believe it can sprout from anywhere through anyone, practically. We have done and are doing what we do because:

1. I learned, through 27 hours of study with Joe Bessler, to think, talk, breathe theology as a lens to see through: to see God, the world, the church, myself, etc. through the lens. Specifically to grasp the inherent and interdependent connections of the constructive theological worldview; to know that one's image of God will result in one's default mode image and purpose, for example, of the church. Somewhere else on this blog I have probably laid it all out; if not, another blog post will be required to show the linkages. But here is what I know: if God is that which makes all things new, that relates all things, that especially relates with those with the least power, if God is about creating, freeing, liberating, renewing, transforming, healing, forming community, if God is not about being some distant principle of abstraction but embodies and incarnates, and if we want to, to use an old wonderful term, obey that God, be in alignment with such a God, in right relationship with such a One, so that God can flow through us and what we open up with God, then we must shape ourselves and our communities in ways that are as in synch with such a God as we humanly can do or try. What would a people do and how would they behave in such an image? Call them a missional community of faithfulness or simply the church, they will turn themselves inside out. Now a lot of folks who follow the Christian Community Development Association's 3Rs of relocation, redistribution, and reconciliation do not have such an image of God, at least not exactly, or wouldn't use my kind of process relational liberationist language, though I think there can be some common ground, but what we do here in Turley and surrounding area is definitely a theological initiative of a certain kind.

2. Related to the more obvious theological understanding, I also got an education at PTS that used such books as the social work students I work with now used, principally John McKnight's Building Communities From the Inside Out. That was in Care in Christian Community class with Roy Steinhoff Smith whose book The Mutuality of Care I have revisited more than once since leaving PTS. His class helped me to look at a community, and the people in the community, from many different lens, which has given me insights in understanding the history and current systems in place and at work that have led this community to becoming so endangered. Speaking of systems, it was at PTS that I learned about family systems and congregational systems and all of those learnings have helped to see and helped to respond as we find the places within our place where we can intervene with a non-anxious presence of generosity amidst so much feelings and so much reality of scarcity. Thanks to Unitarian Universalist minister and former PTS professor and now minister of University Christian Church, independent congregational, in Wichita, Gary Blaine for his church administration and transformational church classes and especially for his ecumenical internship where we not only got to get out and study churches of all sizes and types in the Tulsa area but we put that study into readings of works by people like William Stringfellow, Reinhold Niehbur, and Bill Easum. Immersing myself during seminary in those early books by Easum and Bandy and after them by Leonard Sweet began to show me how church could be, and must become, different. My final seminary class was new techniques in conflict management; there can be no growth without change no change without conflict, so how you embody conflict matters if you want to be a part of something new and growing. And you can best use conflict well if you cultivate a core of non-anxious self-differentiated peaceful generous abundance, i.e. live in the Spirit, let prayer and practices grow in you, and so those classes in spiritual formation by Mady Fraser and Janet Parachin and Leslie Penrose were foundational. Speaking of Leslie, her former church Community of Hope in Tulsa was an early role model of missional church for me with its practice of giving away half of its offerings, and its location serving those abandoned by much of culture, in its case persons with HIV/AIDS and GLBT persons.

3. Finally, all the time in all that we do and dream of doing, I am grounded in what I know of Jesus and Paul. One of our short mission expressions, borrowed from The Simple Way in Philadelphia, is that we seek to make Jesus visible in the world. Well that of course all depends on what your understanding of Jesus is how that visibility will be known. And so to Brandon Scott and Rick Lowery and all the biblical teachers, what we are and do here is because of what you taught. I had started a church before I came to seminary, but I wouldn't have even gone to seminary I think if it hadn't been for a seminary Brandon Scott taught that wove in new understandings of the parables and of film; it wasn't just that I realized PTS could be a seminary home for me after that, but I returned home with a calling toward the "kingdom of God" because of the power of the parables. At PTS I grew in that understanding and calling coming from the parables even more; the parables that are about turning God upside down, Empires upside down, and inside out. And so it is the Jesus of the parables, as best and challenging as I can understand those, that we seek to make visible as best we can. And it was at PTS that I first heard about the new perspective, the original perspective, on and of the Apostle Paul. And about the shape and nature of his communities, and their radically hospitable way. Much of my study of Paul continued after my seminary years, but it started there. Jesus took the kingdom of God to the abandoned places of Empire and its God and to the abandoned people there; Paul took the spirit of that Jesus into the face of and into the shadow of the Empire itself to form communities of the Christ in the heart of the realms of Ceaser; he wrote the book, or letters, on "edge communities" and "shadow communities". And both of them were immersed in the lens of the Hebrew prophets before them, and so my study as a graduate assistant particularly with Rick Lowery in Genesis' creation liberation sabbath spirituality, and Jeremiah, and what it means to live as a resident alien, to be in exile but not completely dominated by that experience, all of that finds its way into envisioning community today.

There were other, post and extra seminary experiences that have shaped my growing understanding of church (time spent with Carl Scovel and the notion of the simplicities of the christian church; my wife Bonnie of course and exposure to ecological organic gardening and life; and the tipping point of a workshop with Reggie McNeal on the calling of mission)...but because I have sometimes written, as above, about the lack of intentionality in addressing some of these ways of being church that are in the more mainline and liberal churches and especially at their seminaries, I wanted to reflect really on what the grounding was that I received there that I go back to much more often than I do my shelves of books in my library (that I adore all about organic missional incarnational emerging etc), or to the online resources even.

It has been nine years since I was graduated from Phillips, and spoke during commencement about the calling toward a new kind of church for a new kind of times, and maybe one of the best things that PTS gave me was that I didn't then have a clear model of what I would be doing, no roadmap except the theological map, unlike some of the more popular church planting places of the more conservative where you might go through the training like becoming the owner of a franchise. Instead, what I had was all that I wrote about in the paragraphs above: time spent at an intersection of theology, culture, and scripture, and an even stronger committment to imitate and initiate the kingdom of God.

If you want to see where it has taken some of us, read below, or follow along at http://www.turleyok.blogspot.com/ or www.facebook.com/revronrobinson and the FB page for A Third Place Community. End.

More Missional Renaissance: Not a church, but the church

You might want to read posts below first.

From Reggie McNeal: "He kept pressing me for an answer: "Tell me what a missional church is."..I tried to explain why we weren't getting very far in our conversation. When you refer to "a" missional church, you miss the point. The discussion should be about "the" church. "A" church is an institutional way of looking at church. "The" church is a movement. "The" church is people. He didn't buy it. My answer didn't satisfy his need to develop a description of something he wanted to call "church."

"This encounter reveals different points of departure in how people view the church. These are not just points in tension; they are irreconcileable in their implications for what people wind up thinking and doing. When we use a instead of the in front of church, I think we miss the missional revolution in its true essence, by reverting to language supporting institutional implications. "A" church draws on centuries of thinking about a corporate something that exists apart from the people who make it up. This language fails to make the break with the Western Constantinian institutionalized view of what church is. Missional followers of Jesus don't belong to a church. They are the church. Wherever they are, the church is present. Church is not something outside of themselves that they go to or join or support [or attend.RR]; it's something they are. "

Mission means sending. The sense of sending is throughout the whole of the Bible. The mission of God, the sending for God, is about redemption, reconciling, responding, restoring. The missional church is then a redundancy. But it is God's mission that calls us; our mission is becoming a people of two or more who are seeking, listening to the call, to find where God is moving in the world and we are sent to be there participating with God in response to that call.

And an organized church with bylaws, budgets, building, paid ministry and all those other inherent drawbacks can still be a thriving missional people; if they catch the three shifts McNeal writes the book to guide people through.

Just as it doesn't take what people traditionally think of as a church to be the church.

"I was sharing these issues at aq conference of collegiate ministers and a participant said, 'You mean to tell me that if two Christians are tutoring high school students in English, that's a church? My reply was that centuries of conditioning would lead us in the West to frame that question that way, in an attempt to define some organization so we can talk about it. 'What I am saying,' I explained, 'is if people are tutoring students in the name of Jesus, the church is there.'

This is why we talk not about planting a church, but a movement, church planting churches, and how that makes all the difference in your spiritual DNA of the group, is the root of many conflicts and different ideas of mission, and it is why we are challenged not only to think about such things as the symbolism of the difference between planting and starting, a church and the church, but also why the first order is for a conversation on what is imagined and meant by church, and why, and expanding people's understanding and committment to what church is. It is why, after you do that and get people to open up to new/old visions of church, that planting missional faith communities whether you call them churches or not, whether you organize them as corporate beings or not, why people will see 1. that it is necessary as a very aspect of being missional, as a marker of healthy spirituality, that you aren't complete until you have multiplied even in a variety of ways, that one way or another you have given yourself away; and 2. that it is, after you get it, the shift, that it is not something hard to do, but because it is very natural, very sustaining, it is hard not to do it; it is easy, really, and it is fun. If it isn't easy and isn't fun then that is a red flag that it isn't missional in God's way anyway.

More to come. Get the book. Give me links where others are talking about it. What do you think, feel, about some of these excerpts and reflections? Much of what is in the book goes on to give "traditional churches" inspiration and stories about how they can become a part of the missional renaissance. Not all is lost. There are things they can do, especially with their resources, that missional communities in places like here in Turley can't, in terms of this renaissance, this new birth, this church being born again. So if you have given up on church, or are a part of a church, or are moving into missional identity as we are, and donning one of my other hats if you are part of a small group in the UU Christian Fellowship world or might be thinking of growing one where you are, there is something for you here.

More will come from McNeal's book here at the blog in the days and weeks to come.

Book Update: Can you guess what is missing?

The following books from and about and promoting progressive or liberal Christianity have been published already in 2006, a kind of "perfect storm" of publishing from, so to speak, "our side of the table." (just in time for the elections? one wonders). Guess what is missing from virtually all of these....a gospel imperative, not to mention survival and thriving in the emerging cultures, of church planting. These are excellent books, rah-rah for the cause, and I wish more people paid attention to them, and I am thrilled that people are paying attention to them...but....across the board so many with a missing piece which many have said is vital to the very survival in the coming generations.

"Getting On Message: Challenging the Christian Right from the Heart of the Gospel" (Beacon Press, 2006, UUA)
---"Why The Christian Right Is Wrong" (2006, Jossey-Bass) by Robin Meyers of the United Church of Christ;
---"Big Christianity: What's Right with the Religious Left" (2006, Westminster John Knox) by Disciples of Christ Jan G. Linn;
---"Thy Kingdom Come: An Evangelical's Lament: How the Religious Right distorts the Faith and Threatens America" (2006, Basic Books) by Randall Balmer, evangelical Christian and American religious history professor;
---“The Phoenix Affirmations; A New Vision for the Future of Christianity” (2006, Jossey-Bass0 by Eric Elnes, a UCC minister;
---The emerging Christian Way (2006, CopperHouse), a book of essays by progressives (at least there is some allusion here from Marcus Borg about the rise of the emergent church, as I note he and Brian McLaren have been appearing together).
---“Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church is Transforming the Faith” (2006, HarperSanFrancisco) by Diana Butler Bass, Episcopalian.
---"Middle Church: Reclaiming the Moral Values of the Faithful Majority from the Religious Right" (2006, Simon and Schuster) by Bob Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Churches, United Methodist.
---and from a more inter-religious and secular intersection is Rabbi Michael Lerner's "The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right (2006, HarperSanFrancisco). There is a buried nugget here about starting those groups of the network for spiritual progressives, but it is still mostly message-driven instead of why these groups reflect something basic about the spiritual left, and indeed about God.

Add to this from just a year earlier but with an updated guide in 2006:
---“God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It” by evangelical and liberal Jim Wallis who has published this year “Living God’s Politics,” (2006, HarperSanFrancisco), a guidebook based on the recent work. The guidebook is at least geared for group work, though it is lean on the need for forming the groups as well as keys for how to form these groups for the guidebook among people not already a part of "churchwork."

Barbara Brown Taylor’s “Leaving Church: A memoir of faith” (also 2006, HarperSanFrancisco) is in a different category as a memoir from a progressive Christian. It actually makes a pretty good personal journey case why people are leaving church to deepen faith and why so many are finding that in emerging organic ways that have little to do with organized church, but she doesn't talk about how many are finding their responses in emergent and church planting movements to the malaise and malady that afflicts the "successful" church not to mention the many dysfunctional unhealthy churches. But there is a section, all too brief, on the start of a new church by the church Taylor leaves. In fact it talks about how starting that sucessful church too added to the "burnout" if that phrase can be applied; probably because it was seen as another way of program outreach rather than organic reproduction that revs up the juices of the "rev" instead of runs it down. A good 20-20 hindsight kind of look at where a lot of people are.

But then how about these titles too for hitting the mark in so many ways except one crucial one.

"The Future of Christianity: Can It Survive?" (2006, Prometheus Books) by Arthur J. Bellinzoni, professor emeritus of religion, which is another in a long line of books by liberals looking at Christianity in this coming century but without any mention of the emerging church and necessity for church planting movements,
like also---
John Shelby Spong's "A New Christianity for a New World" (2001, Harper SanFrancisco) and "Why Christianity Must Change of Die" (1998, HarperSanFrancisco), --great titles and thought but nothing about church-planting movements for progressives. The first book has several concluding sections on liturgy and ecclesia and how it might not be church but they are rooted in how the message coming from these events will be changed or need to change, not so much about the very gatherings themselves.
"Saving Jesus: From those Who are Right" (1999, Fortress Press) by Carter Heyward, and Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity" (1997, Crown) by Bruce Bawer. Great books from those who have found great liberation in Jesus after suffering from the exclusion of the church, but while they focus on the message coming from the Right they don't reveal how the Right's methods and its passion for engaging the new cultures is helping it spread while those who have "seen the light" are holing up in their newfound safe places.
also
There was Christianity in the 21st Century, edited by Deborah Brown (2000, Crossroad) which has one, at least part of one, promising essay that touches on the life of the church itself and evangelism in "Reflections on the Church and the City' by Paul Moore, Jr. I would hope these books with such wide-ranging all encompassing titles would take into account the emergent and the evangelical as part of liberalism and not as somehow its antithesis.

and "Christianity in the 21st Century: Reflections on the challenges ahead" by Robert Wuthnow (Oxford University Press, back in 1993) which at least gives much thought to churches and communities but doesn't mention church planting, although in the epilogue there is a pretty good summary of why church isn't working for many and how they have found spirituality in small groups and how these small groups and relationships could become church for many. This is a sleeper of a book, I think, which emergent and church planters should go back to even though it will of course be dated. Or engage with his other works.

Oh well, now to put a lot of these books back on the shelves. I hope emergent folks will become more acquainted with them, and that the progressives would become more acquainted with the ones on my blog list in the Book Section (see archives).

Church Planting/Growth Redux

To pull together a potpourri of older posts on this blog related to church planting and growth issues, here is a link that will take you to a good assortment.

http://progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com/search?q=church+planting

Gems from planting guru Bill Easum and his ministry leaders.
Anti planting attitudes among churches.
The Church Planting 101 link of links from around the time of the Minneapolis GA workshop in 2011
Book Reviews
The Why of Planting: The Inside Out Church and new ways of neo-evangelism
The Questions To Begin Asking
The intersection, or not, of progressive seminaries and planting, of progressive theology and planting.
The basics of Missional: The church not A Church
Tensiion Points around Class and Theology, Children, Jesus, The Importance of Place
And more

The Inside Out Church & Economics of Evangelism; the Why of Planting

Last weekend I had a fun time at the Christian Universalist Association celebration in Oklahoma City, first Friday night as part of the Restoration Nation father's day annual celebration, and preaching by Carlton Pearson of New Dimensions in Tulsa, which is now worshipping at All Souls Unitarian Church after a few years of worshipping at Trinity Episcopal after losing members and its building when it was megachurch Higher Dimensions. And Then Saturday at the UCC Church of the Open Arms for the CUA celebration. I was invited to talk about church planting, especially the incarnational organic way, as a way of growth. The CUA is interested in church planting in a variety of ways including house churches, and it is also starting moves toward its own ordination process as part of leadership development that could be helpful in starting such church plants.

The folks at the CUA seemed a bit worried that their first celebration wasn't attended by more people; some 30 for their part of the weekend event it seemed, but it was an ecumenical event and good sharing on Christian Universalism which is more widespread of course than such numbers would indicate. People were talking about higher gas prices and the economy for low turnout and that is always a factor. But then I think there is also the old issue of universalism and committment to institutions (they said a lot of folks also weren't too crazy about hooking up with another organization if it is interested in furthering its organization and assets, especially many universalists in the more charismatic side of the movement who are spirit-led and tend to be wary of institutions.) There's all of that I think too; another way UU and pentecostalists are brothers and sisters of the Third Person of the Holy Trinity :).

I was thinking that the problem is likely that they didnt have more in attendance but that they weren't small enough; kicking movements off these days I think is more a matter of retreats than revivals, more a matter of going deep in relationships with a tribe of folks; the same kind of dynamic that will kick off church planting movements. More small group sharing than large scale proclamation. But the CUA is young and its right that an ecumenical movement is bubbling up all around its concerns; the very ecumenical nature of it might be an ironic stumbling block to people taking on another organization; they are already sensing a coming out inside their own circles and tribes and don't need another.

My thoughts anyway coming from an admittedly church planting perspective.

What I was struck with in preparing for my presentation was that instead of spending so much time on how people are doing things organic and incarnational these days, and what we are up to here in Turley, OK, as I have done in different ways since I started doing workshops back in the early 90s on this, is that I could have spent much more productive time focusing our attention on the why of church planting movements. Especially with universalists. You have to counter from others, and know deeply within your own communities, why it is vital for universalist salvation believers to be involved in planting. After all, the argument goes, why plant a church, why try to attract people to a church, if you are going to see them all in heaven anyway one of these days. What is it that would require me to make such a sacrifice, to make such a committment, if the reward for that committment is no more of a payoff than if I don't make such a sacrifice and committment. If you want more of this economic basis of religious committment, of course, spend time with the wonderful books, provocative books, by Rodney Stark, now of Baylor.

I often talk about culture trumping theology; well, marketplace culture might trump it all.
But as I told them this last weekend when I did get into that most important why of planting such churches, regardless of the multiple ways of how, is that we need to plant such churches, such God communities, precisely to counter that marketplace quid pro quo kind of spirituality. Just because it is reality doesn't make it true spiritually. That kind of worldview on religious committment is precisely what the church, that body of people making Jesus visible in the world, is called to counteract against by creating communities of the opposite value, encouraging disciples to be faithful for a different reason, and to know the benefits of that counterliving are rich indeed. We need to create more and different churches of universalist salvation because it should be a part of our spiritual discipline, our walk with Jesus, to reflect and embody Jesus' values which were communal, missional, getting outside of one's self and acting radically other than the Empire way of acting and thinking and relating. We need to plant such churches, such missions, because we do so from the deepest part of our being in response to the gifts of love the God of Love has given to us, so that this God of Love and not the God of Fear is the one that is made visible in the world. We plant them because we aren't complete and whole if we don't in our spiritual life, for the shape of love is a pouring out into another, the same way God incarnates the world. As Paul Ricouer says, its the Absolute Absolving.

The early church, all those universalists like Paul, knew that the spread of their churches was a core religious necessity because it was the way they did what they were called to do, to participate in Christ, in growing the body of Christ, as Christ grows them. It is the ultimate way of relating to those who are unlike us, which is the way of Jesus. We do it because if we don't there will be more hell on earth, and for that, somehow someway, we will be held accountable.

And remember this all leads to the next understanding that this doesn't mean that what we plant will have to look and be and act like what we understand church to be now, especially if we think of it in those terms as permanent building, set name, paid preacher and staff, set worship time, etc. etc If we think of it in those terms then the chasm that opens up before us between our resources and reality will paralyze us. But if we look with other eyes and other perspectives, then it becomes doable, and is catching. Our God wouldn't have it any other way; if it is done in such a way it seems to engender burnout or despair, then you know it isn't what God is seeking.

Well, thats a few notes I remember making from the short why part of the conversation. Next I will post more on the how. But that stuff, with some changes, you have heard from me before. But it will be another fresher look at the Inside Out Church.

Type rest of the post here

Dorrien, pt. 5: On Forrest Church

See posts below for introductions to these topics.

First, prayers for the Rev. Dr. Forrest Church and his family and the congregation at All Souls Church in New York City as he continues to recover from cancer and surgery. See more at www.allsoulsnyc.org.

Dorrien labels the section "Recovering Transcendentalist Universalism: Forrest Church"

D: "Liberal theology as a formal tradition began with Schleiermacher, but as an institutional North American tradition it began with the New England Arminians who, having called themselves liberal Christians, came to accept the name Unitarian. [RR: oh well, in a parallel universe...:)]. In the 1980s Forrest Church emerged as a leading advocate of typical twentieth-century Unitarian rationalism, but later judged that liberalism without God makes a poor religion. [RR: I remember meeting Forrest for the first time in 1981 I think when he was the keynote speaker at the southwest uu summer institute which became his slim book "Born Again Unitarian Universalism" and I don't think I would call him even then typical of the then Unitarian rationalism.]

D. goes into bio and calls Church's early works minimal theology, linking it with Jefferson. He goes into the celebrated public controversies and challenges and changes in Church's career and marriage and alcoholism and "personal demons" [RR: see Peter C. Hodgson for how his alcoholism shaped his own theology too. I can see a new book coming that would be great to read about so many theologians and addictions; post-Tillich they aren't waiting for widows to divulge and process it. If someone is aware of a book like this already, let me know.] Anyway, Dorrien traces Church's evolution from a 'taxidermy" approach to religion to a worshipper approach. He notes how he starts using God more and more in his public works.

D: "He favored 'liberal religion" over "religious liberalism' because the latter reduced religion to a mere adjective, like too much of Unitarian Universalism. A decade later he sought to head off the problem of relativism [RR in the one light through many windows cathedral metaphor Church used] by adding to the fifth point that the various truths deriving from Truth differ in measure "according to the insight, receptivity, and behavior of the beholder." Truth is personalized in ways by which it can be judged; individual and collective acts that harm our collective well-being are sinful; acts that serve our collective well-being are saving.

D: "He loved his adopted UU tradition, but worried that it would shrivel and die if it did not make sometehing like his own spiritual and intellectual course correction." He quotes his 2001 GA address about the need to be more evangelical in both its theology and practice [Amen]...He did not believe UUs had to return to "the old Universalist God," the name "God" or even to Emersonian mysticism, because Church did not believe in single answers. [RR: direct parallel to problems with church planting from above--if you have to start a church, particularly a church-planting church, from the top-down that is "mainstream UU" you are going to run into difficulty of not only not providing a single answer theologically to the community but no answer; but if you set out to grow from a de-centralized movement many church planting churches that reflect many single answers, sharing a free church covenantal basis, then you incarnate the theological approach Church is suggesting. I might still have doubts about its success without at least the name God being in its culture, and see Church's other points for why, but I stand to be corrected.]

D: "Modern theology was a story of doubt and negation, and Unitarianism was an extreme example [RR: I note that Dorrien doesn't seem as conversant with our more Christian Universalist tradition, but that's our/its fault]. Church compared modern theology [RR: by which is meant liberal i think] to peeling the layers of an onion in search of its seed: "Eventually, nothing is left but our tears."

D: "Church did not want his tradition to go all the way back to William Ellery Channing who described himself as a Unitarian Christian, not a Christian Unitarian. Only a small minority of Unitarian Universalists considered "Christian" as an important modifier of their religious identity. Church spoke for that option. He was a Christian universalist, not a universalist Christian. Believing in the Light that shines through all windows, he allowed Christianity to refract and shape its meanings, modifying his universalism. There is such a thing as Buddhist or humanist universalism, he reasoned, but one cannot be a Universalist universalist, for it is impossible to perceive through every window. Universalist Christianity is another impossibility, because in that case the thing that modifies one's faith becomes its nominative: "Primary allegiance is relegated to one part of the whole that encompasses it." [RR: :) see what happens when Universalism is separated from its Christian root heresy of universal salvation?]. Church's ambition for Unitarian Universalism was to recover, with a multiperspectival and out-ward reaching consciousness, the best parts of Emersonian transcendentalism. The best way to do that was to "band together, cultivate interdependence, build strong institutions, support them generously, and become more fully accepting and embracing of one another." [RR: Amen, again what a good lead-in to the necessity of church planting, if we see all of the preceding not as a recipe for trying to become a pure community unto ourselves, but include in the "one another" all those without a church home]. If twenty-first-century Unitarian Universalists could do it, their tradition would finally emerge from Emerson's shadow into his light.

The Book Section

Do you have reflections on the following books that have meant much to me? If so please share them. If you haven't read them, I urge you to do so and let us know your reflections.
In the coming days I will go through them with more commentary in different posts. But here they are, no particular order of importance:

1. Planting Growing Churches for the 21st Century by Aubrey Malphurs
2. Starting A New Church: The Church Planter's Guide To Success by Ralph Moore
3. Planting New Churches in a Postmodern Age by Ed Stetzer
4. Church Planting: Laying Fopundations by Stuart Murray
5. Church Planting For a Greater Harvest by C. Peter Wagner
6. Changing Church by Wagner
7. Home Cell Group Explosion by Joel Comiskey
8. Emerging Churches by Gibbs and Bolger
9. Organic Church by Neil Cole
10. Out of Bounds Church by Steve Taylor
11. The Present Future by Reggie McNeal
12. The Small Church at Large by Robin Trebilcock
13. The House Church Manual by William Tenny-Brittain
14. Houses That Change The World by Wolfgang Simson
15. Small Congregation, Big Potential by Lyle Schaller
16. What Have We Learned by Schaller
17. From Geography to Affinity by Schaller
18. A Mainline Turnaround by Schaller
19. The New Context for Ministry by Schaller
20. Discontinuity and Hope by Schaller
21. The Very Large Church by Schaller
22. The Emerging Church by Dan Kimball
23. Emerging Worship by Dan Kimball
24. Unlearning Church by Michael Slaughter
25. Out on the Edge by Michael Slaughter
26. Worship Evangelism by Sally Morganthaler
27. The Church in Emerging Culture ed by Leonard Sweet
28. The Spectacle of Worship in a Wired World by Tex Sample
29. Postmodern Pilgrims by Sweet
30. Soul Tsunami by Sweet
31. A is for Abductive: The Language of the Emerging Church by Sweet
32. Jesus Drives Me Crazy by Sweet
32a. All the other works by Sweet
33. A Generous Orthodoxy by Brian McLaren
34. The Secret Message of Jesus by McLaren
34a. All the other works by McLaren
35. Sacred Cows Make Gourmet Burgers by Bill Easum
36. Dancing with Dinosaurs by Easum
37. Growing Spiritual Redwoods by Easum
38. Put on your own Oxygen Mask First by Easum
39. Unfreezing Moves by Easum
40. Beyond the Box by Easum & Dave Travis
41. Under The Radar: Risk-Taking Churches by Easum & Tenny-Brittain
42. Moving Off the Map by Tom Bandy
43. Coaching Change by Bandy
44. Fragile Hope by Bandy (I know, I know, should have put a Schaller book here :) )
45. Kicking Habits by Bandy
46. Road Runner by Bandy
47. Christian Chaos by Bandy
48. Mission Mover: Beyond Education by Bandy
49. Revisioning the Church by Peter C. Hodgson
50. Friedman's Fables by Edwin H. Friedman (you can't plant and grow without embracing conflict in a healthy self-differentiated way; pearls of leadership wrapped up in these fables)
51. Generation to Generation by Friedman (the classic)
52. Lump together some of the New Perspective on Paul books, the original church planter--Reinventing Paul by John Gager, Paul: A Fresh Perspective by N.T. Wright; Rereading Romans by Stanley Stower; Paul and Empire ed. Richard Horsley and In Search of Paul by John Dominic Crossan (I will do a separate section on Paul and planting)
53. The "usual suspects" of progressive Christianity--Borg, Crossan, Spong, Lamott, Wallis, et al (I will do separate section on them too; though they don't have experience with starting new churches in new ways, they provide good theological reasons to do so).
54. In the Name of Jesus by Henri Nouwen.

A few tension points: Children, Class, Theology and Heresy #2

Few areas of exploration and questioning for planting "new/next/organic/emergent/liquid/pomo/micro church":

1. Children:
How to use same principles to grow relationships in God's spirit here in new ways? Want to get beyond "Sunday School" model, focus on helping them connect with others, to learn to be in relationship with God in the spirit of Jesus, helping them to see themselves not as consumers but producers and co-creators too, to plant the vision in them in some ways no matter how young. But there are tension points here. Emergent seems easier or at least has more experience with adults. Not a big problem. As you help adults and parents deepen and begin to grow and spread their own Spirit, children will be the beneficiaries. But for the gatherings? How to be organic here and not fall into the same default mode? So far trying to balance group time for all, with special focus on children. But as we stress it isn't a one-size fits all world or church anymore, yet the small size of these planting groups, this micro-church, pulls against that by defacto being one and all related, and different ages existing together sort of like the old one-room school house (and yet are we retrofitting to that; I hate the bigger boxier one grade for 700 kid school centers and much prefer the other model updated.) My hunch is to face that fact and go with it and when the times are intergenerational be intergenerationally related, and keep looking for ways when the Spirit will be deepened with other micro-connections even among our small micro-group. Looking at getting children together leads to notions of looking for ways of getting just women together and just men together, just this or that connected folks together. Reminds me I have to remind folks that they don't have to feel like they have to attend everything we do as we go inward or outward; that freeing themselves from that will move us from obligation to opportunity thinking and creating more. But seems like more is needed in exploring this aspect of church planting no matter the model that is being used. A big tension point. Radical solution might be to eventually move toward multiplying into a family micro-church and an adult-only micro-church and a mixed micro-church, or at least seeing how the existing group can rotate its own incarnational sense of all three. Anyone following?

2. Cultural Creatives/Economics/Pyschographics: How important is place?
Probably have written some on this before. Mentioned it during the emergent workshop at the summer church institute (see post below or in archives). It came up there. It came out of Neil Cole's Organic Church. On one hand, he is saying that the middle class suburban or yuppies or whoever thinks they have their lives on track, upward and onward forever, probably irregardless of theological bent, won't be the place to respond to church planting at least in its sense he sees it as fostering life transformation groups that multiply themselves. He says go where the people are obviously and obviously to themselves hurting, to the places known to be full of addictions, violence, desperation. Those with money have these problems but they have the wherewithall to hide from them; they are going to gravitate toward communities that help them to continue to do so.
So on the one hand going into a place where people have hit bottom gives the church planter relationship builder an advantage.

But, is there a correlation with areas or neighborhoods with high percentages of people in some kind of transition, in blue collar or unemployed areas, with high rates of high school dropouts or those who only went to highschool, with high rates of retired folks who were in blue collar jobs, and with a reluctance to be early-adapters of new ways of being new church? Is there a reason why there seem to be so many emergent gatherings in the Pacific Northwest, in Minn., or in the places where young professionals congregate no matter where the urban area? Is it a new urban thing, in keeping with many other new urban and new design patterns of living?

Sometimes I think living as I do in a place where so many have so few resources to be consumers it has made them more connected to churches that will produce "free spiritual stuff" for them to consume rather than helping them to create and produce for themselves and others. It is part of that culture of scarcity that can drive them. Now it is true that for those who do connect and do stand out and get the culture of abudance, sort of like the few that got it when Jesus was living it among them in that kind of place and time too, then the emergent way can really be a powerful experience, and that experience more than makes up for the numbers who don't won't can't get it.

Plus throw in the political dynamic of those who fall to the "left" and "right" on issues such as immigration (a key sorting issue I think and one the Precept used to use, ahead of its time I guess, in their demographic analysis) and the "culture wars.' Makes it all the more difficult to be new church in a new way in an old place. Those on the left, who feel estranged from the culture around them (around here anyway; I think the same might apply in reverse in other places) will tend to gravitate toward existing communities where they will find instant community and support and that will tend to turn them inward in terms of evangelism and church planting because of the inherent threat such new outreach brings in disruption to the homeostasis they have sought in their liberal conclaves. It makes it tough to get them to join smaller newer more mobile groups, especially ones that seek by nature to build relationships with those who are near and around them, those who hold the very political positions that cause the estranged to seek shelter in the first place. Takes a lot of "meeting Jesus" time to get beyond that inner impulse.
So, place and all that it means, is another tension point.

3. Third Tension point, especially for Unitarian Universalists, but to a lesser extent for all religious liberals, is Theology, particularly Jesus. I'll have to get into this in more detail in the future. But it is a major tension point. Can you plant if you don't have a common core theology among the leadership? I doubt it. Even if you have a common core theology, and it doesn't include Jesus in the center, can you plant a church? Yes, a church, or maybe, or even on some days I think doubtful, since I think the world is shifting away from church that is just church. What I mean is there was a time when we could plant humanist churches (or for other denominations fill in the blank as appropriate, such as theistic or world religious or inner light or whatever) and people who didn't fit into the church of their upbringing would help us fill them because they still "needed" to be in church; it was after all, a churched world at the time. They wanted community but not Jesus and it was tough to find that because the choices were so few (by the way check out Lyle Schaller's latest book, all about the context of competition and choices and conflict). But of course today the choices for community, even spiritual community of many kinds, abounds. Connectional opportunities abound, with the internet added in as well. Why go create church then in this new sense if you are only after community with others of similar values? The rewards aren't worth the conflict, the sacrifice, the money, etc. I say, however, maybe or yes, though, on most days because of experience and the world is still in flux. But, I would say no if the question were about planting churches that could plant other churches, which I think will be the key to success in incarnating into the next 100 years. I have serious doubts that you can plant those kind of church movements without Jesus in the center of your communal life. That's heretical point #2. And it cuts both ways, because I have a strong hunch that those who say they plant with Jesus in the center but who are really at heart doing it with Doctrine and Creed at heart, rather than story and action, will also fail to be able to reproduce through multiple generations in the next 100 years. And as I say all of this is worthy of much more reflection and discernment (which I will do with some thoughts that have grown out of just getting into my reading of Pete Ward's Liquid Church) and probably eating crow because of course I am biased. But then, what are biases for?

Thinking out loud here, and treading on ground that has dangerous currents in it of class issues especially. But then, this is the place for that.

A hopeful sign

There is a growing "generosity" movement within the churches of the UUA. It seems to me it has been growing anyway. Back when I was a student minister of a small church in Oklahoma in the late 1990s and I borrowed an idea from churches of other traditions of donating half of the collection plate to community groups it seemed like a rare idea among UU churches and ministers. But I have been pleased over the years since to hear of more and more churches beginning to do this. I have been fortunate to hear first hand of stories of how this is helping to transform churches and people. This is something that ripples through churches of all size. I think it begins in the churches with a demonstrated history of generosity and big thinking and a culture of abundance, but it has been helping to change the church culture of some churches without that history.

I think that the generosity or abundance movement in the UUA will till good soil for the seeds of church planting movements; it comes from the same place. I would look at churches who are engaged intentionally in such varied generosity projects and you will probably see churches who have a history of church planting or church growth at least, and also where the next wave of church planting will emerge.

For more check out www.allsoulschurch.org and order the books of Michael Durall like the new one Living The Call, and also The Almost Church, and go online and get his older books more specifically on generosity in churches.

To you church leaders, clergy and lay, you need to be looking at the next step for your leaders who have been involved and moved by your new generosity initiatives--build on your success by planting the seed of church planting in these folks. they are the ones with the DNA to go do it. Can't stand the thought of losing those very same people in your own church?? then you better learn to walk your talk and trust a true culture of abundance. Or remember that you stand to gain so much more. Seems like Jesus said something or other about that...

Emergent Church--Sermon

Hi all. Here is my sermon from this past Sunday given to the UU Fellowship of Fayetteville, AR. A kind of general introduction to the emergent church movement and to the necessity of church planting in its various forms. There are many seeds for further exploration here, which of course can't be gone into in a sermon. Ron.

Readings For the Sermon:

Scriptural Reading: The parable of the dinner party, by Professor Brandon Scott (Reimagine The World, p. 113-114):

Introduction: In a world where on one hand the banquets of the well-off were for and with the well-off, and on the other hand there were many who even if they were able to get food on a regular basis ate it alone, Jesus said God’s world, God’s party, God’s meal, God’s kingdom was like---
“A man was giving a big dinner and invited many guests. At the dinner hour the host sent his slave to tell the guests: “Come it’s ready now.”
But one by one they all began to make excuses. The first said to him, “I just bought a farm, and I have to go and inspect it; please excuse me.” And another said, “I just bought five pairs of oxen, and I’m on my way to check them out; please excuse me.” And another said, “I just got married, and so I cannot attend.” So the slave came back and reported these (excuses) to his master. The master said to his slave, “Go out on the streets and bring back whomever you find to have dinner.”

Contemporary reading, from “Emerging Churches” by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan K. Bolger:
Quoting Mark Scandrette (p. 42) of ReImagine! In San Francisco: “The emerging church is a quest for a more integrated and whole life of faith. There is a bit of theological questioning going on, focusing more on kingdom theology, the inner life, friendship/community, justice, earth keeping, inclusivity, and inspirational leadership. In addition, the arts are in a renaissance, as are the classical spiritual disciplines. Overall, it is a quest for a holistic spirituality”…Emerging churches 1.)identify with the life of Jesus; 2.) transform the secular realm, and 3.) live highly communal lives. Because of these three activities, they 4.) welcome the stranger, 5.) serve with generosity, 6.) participate as producers, 7.) create as created beings, 8.) lead as a body, and 9) take part in spiritual activities. (Gibbs, Bolger, p. 45)... “I read the gospels over and over. Nothing I was doing on Sunday was what I thought Jesus would be doing if he were here. (Joe Boyd, Apex, Las Vegas, p. 47). “We don’t believe in any religion anymore—including Christianity—but we do believe in following Jesus. We no longer need religion with its special buildings, dogmas, programs, clergy, or any other human inventions that displace genuine spirituality. Why do we need a name and address to be church? We’ve come out of religion and back to God.” (Jonathan Campbell, Seattle, p. 47)

Sermon:
My ministry as Executive Director of the UU Christian Fellowship allows me to travel and talk about the contemporary state of UUism, of Christianity, and of UU Christianity, and the many big changes in each of these in just the 30 plus years I have been a UU, or during the past 61 years since the UUCF was founded in Boston. But today I am moved to preach about the religious movement called—for want of a better term—the Emergent Church.
My sermon grows out of my other passion church planting, my other ministry hat, and my on-going experiences with an emerging group we call The Living Room. To encounter the UUCF check out www.uuchristian.org or please pick up some of the literature I’ve brought. If you want to keep up with us at The Living Room go to www.epiphanyspirit.org.

Theodore Parker, one of the great Unitarian preacher of the 1800s, preached a sermon that could be an historical guide for the emergent church. He called it The Transient and Permanent in Christianity. In it, he says that the church that worked for the first century didn’t work for the fifth century, and the church of the fifth century didn’t work for the fifteenth century, and the church of the fifteenth century didn’t work for the nineteenth century. By not working I believe he meant it wasn’t fulfilling the church’s constant mission to reach out and transform lives and communities so they better fit into what another early Unitarian minister, William Ellery Channing, called “the likeness of God.”
If Parker were here today, I believe he would say, with the leaders of the emergent church, that the church of the nineteenth century, or the church of the 1950s, or maybe even of the 1990s, doesn’t work now for many, and maybe most, in our world—those who aren’t here this morning.

Both in message and method the emergent church is challenging the established church culture of today.

One of the challenges for many in Christianity has been the rise within its own ranks of the message of the progressive spirit of generosity, liberalism, freedom. Even in the so-called evangelical world, among professed theological conservatives, a new more liberating spirit of Jesus is beginning to emerge. There is the expected reaction and backlash to this, but as some of the samples of the readings showed, the emergent church is moving away from dogmatism. For example, one of the big issues in that world today is…guess what?...universal salvation. Evangelicals are having the kinds of controversies and debates that we had in the 1800s. Prominent evangelicals are looking hard at the role of women, of ual orientation, of the relationship to other faiths, and of justice-making. They are moving closer to positions where we were once on the cutting edge.

Emergent church leaders (such as Brian McLaren, Leonard Sweet, Bill Easum, Tom Bandy, and Sally Morganthaler) understand that the broader culture has changed, has become more unchurched, and more pluralistic, and with a more negative impression of the church. They know if the church is to live and fulfill its mission in the changed environment, then the church must change in order to do so. Ala Parker!

Both the message and the method of the church have to change to meet the changing world. One without the other falls short. Those churches that have kept a very narrow message of God and Jesus and the Bible but put everything into the latest cultural methods, high tech, consumerist-oriented, mega-churches, all of which especially attracted the Baby Boomers my age, are not now meeting the needs of many of those Millenial Generation born 1984 and later who have grown up in a more pluralistic world and who are yearning for authentic personal spiritual communities. There will probably always be in the foreseeable future the mega-churches, and some of these are developing a more progressive inclusive spirit, and I hope some of them will be our own UU churches. But the “super-sized” “very large” church won’t come to define the image and meaning of church.

There is now the rise of the house church network, of what is called micro-churches, organic churches, the natural church, or gatherings that even shun the word church because of what the word invokes in people’s minds, and hearts. The word God, Jesus, spirituality and sacredness—these that give some UUs trouble—these are attractive, but church is not. A recent poll showed only 19 percent of Americans felt involvement in a local church was vital in the spiritual life. (Barna, cited in article in April 29, 2006 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette)

You can get a feel for this emergent movement in simply listening to the names that you encounter for the groups. Like our own The Living Room, which was changed from what we had originally called it, Epiphany. Others are called Solomon’s Porch, The Ooze, Tribal Generation, Axxess, Quest, Matthew’s House, The Rock, Levi’s Table, Headspace, Eternity, The Bridge, Landing Place, Ikon, ReImagine, Warehouse, and one of my favorites, located in Denver, is Scum of the Earth, which Jesus would have understood.

How many people here, like me, were born before 1963? (Please raise hands. –it was more than 3/4th). We are the oldest but are often like immigrants in the new world, still with one foot in the old world. But in the church we are still the natives and the rest of the world is the immigrant population. How many after 1984 (just five people raised their hand, and four of them came with me from Oklahoma)? You are natives of the new world. How many in between 1964 and 1984 (this was another almost 1/4th)? You may feel torn between the worlds, like much of your world and lives have been torn.

If you were born before 1963, you are likely to have a common mental image come to mind when you hear the word church—a building, on its own, often with a steeple, with pews, and a pulpit and a seminary-trained paid minister, and an organ, and full of people, meeting on Sunday morning around 10 or 11, and the name prominently included the name of the denomination, and there was almost always a denomination. And the mission of the church was to maintain its tradition and take care of its people, those who found there way to it. And the worship services were all alike, usually only one, and if the church grew it was by addition of members, and adding on space, or moving all together into a new space, keeping all together. “How is your church doing?” was another way to ask—what number of people sat in the sanctuary that Sunday?

From just the names of groups I mentioned before you can imagine that in each of these ways church is emerging with a different mental image. In emergent churches there may be no building, especially an owned building, but gatherings happen in different kinds of places—living rooms, cafes, warehouses, parks, parking lots, apartment clubhouses, nightclubs, coffeehouses, at work, the streets. One of the maxims of the Emerging Church is that there is or should not be a dualism between sacred and secular space. People gather in circles for conversation, for sharing their gifts and experiences, music is not one-size-fits-all but authentic to whatever their micro-culture is, and they may meet at any time, such as when the graveyard shift ends, and they train up and equip their own leaders. And, this is of utmost importance in setting the DNA of the emergent church, the intent is not to start “a church,” but to start a “church-planting church.” Not a single institution, but a movement. It grows and changes by multiplication not addition. One of the most interesting aspects of these churches, by the way, is how they embody what is called an ancient-future faith; they often sustain themselves through ancient spiritual practices that were eclipsed during the Modern and Reformation and Enlightenment eras. One pseudo-motto is “Go Old To Get The Young.”

The goal or measure of success is not numbers, but depth of relationships. In fact numbers at any one time are kept small enough to foster relationships with another and strangers. Emergent churches want to be numerous all right, and to spread, but to do it like the early small c church did it in the years before the church became the large C Church.

Now there is a lot of vital middle ground I am not getting into this morning. There is a lot of emerging happening within existing churches. It is called the Transformational Church movement, growing and extending the established church in new ways while keeping the old ways. It is good, but harder in some ways than new church planting, and it will be a force in the future. I think of it as the Evolutionary Church while the emergent church and its sphere is more the Revolutionary Church. We need both experiments. One size doesn’t fit all, including if the one size and style is the Emergent Church. Defeats the purpose.

I picked 1963 because I like the story of how that was the year when the change was complete in American society from a churched to an unchurched world. In 1963 in a small town in Bible Belt South Carolina, the local movie theater opened on Sunday, and that was news, big news. Think of how far we’ve come since then in what competes with the church for people’s time, talents, and treasure, and loyalty.

The church that did for pre 1963 existed in a world that no longer exists. I use the example of the telephone to depict that (attribution to author and consultant Gil Rendle, whom I heard use this at the UU Large Church Conference in Portland in 2001). Once upon a time in the world of most of us, a telephone was all one shape, all one color (black), it was fixed in a place and if you wanted to use it you had to go to it, and everyone used it for the same purpose, to talk to someone else. But now my phone can hardly be called a phone anymore—it is lots of different shapes, and colors, and it goes where I go, and it is also a computer for the internet and calendar and calculator and camera and more.

I chose 1984 because, well, it was 1984. Also it was the year my first daughter was born. Thirty years after I was born. Also the year I got my first computer, or word processor in those pre-internet days. Theodore Parker didn’t get into it, but he could have explained that the church has changed in major ways when the way of communicating in the world has changed. From oral to manuscript, from manuscript to printing press, from printing press to our multi-electronic culture. Each change in how people experience their world changes their world, and communities such as churches within the world.

I think theologian Leonard Sweet captures this well in his book Postmodern Pilgrims when he talks about so-called immigrants and natives to the changing new world. I am clearly an immigrant. My default mode is in the pre-1963, and certainly pre-1984 world. (Much of my learning, i.e., failures, as a church planter has been living in my default world instead of the world around me today). The natives in our new world will find communities of meaning somewhere, just as they always have, but their expectations and orientations have changed and if the church thinks it has something life-transforming to share it needs to be aware of these changes and learn ways, a variety of ways to be sure, to incarnate and re-new itself. Change or Die. Actually since change entails of sorts, it isn’t a question of whether or not the church dies. It is just whether or not it dies to oblivion and the footnoted pages of history, or dies to live fuller. Which is a lesson for our personal lives as well.

Sweet uses the word EPIC (E-P-I-C) to describe the natives in this new emerging world and how the emerging church responds. They are more Experiential driven, than driven by logical reasoned common sense understandings. This is why emergent churches often offer different hands-on worship opportunities the way the 50s and 60s and 70s church offered classes. They are more Participatory driven, rather than content to be spectators of a religious show others produce. They are more Image-driven, rather than word-grounded in print-culture (hymnals, sermons, debate). They are more interested in embedding their selves in Connecting in deep and intentional communities than in fulfilling themselves as free-spirited autonomous individuals.

These EPIC people, growing in waves around us and in our midst will encounter a variety of answers and opportunities and churches. I hope that our progressive message, particularly now that it is beginning to be heard again and is being explored again by others in society, won’t be lost due to our inability to incarnate it in new methods, new experiments, new risk-taking, new churches. The conservatives can learn about a new message for new times from the liberals. The liberals can learn about new methods for a new time from conservatives. And both will learn that people in this century aren’t interested in old labels and the same old, same old.

All of which brings me around again, as I said it might, to Jesus and his parable of the radical dinner party. Here, in this ancient example, we find a clue to the emergent church.
Church is the dinner we make for others, with others.
We are in a time when guests are making excuses for not coming inside the house for our dinner. And others don’t think the dinner is for them. Maybe those invited guests who didn’t become guests were the usual ones for his parties and were often invited. The man giving the dinner was rich and he was inviting those like him, who had much already. Maybe even they knew something about his dinners and had grown bored with them, or they weren’t nutritious food for the soul. Or maybe, probably, they were taking care of their own worth in the world’s eyes, worrying about maintaining their success in the nt culture’s world’s eyes—tending to their property—instead of looking for opportunities to be in right relationship with others, in celebration and spending of what they’d been given and who they were, being God’s people, otherwise known as the church.
And so the boundaries of the dinner, the invitations, were expanded. A whole new world of people would become guests, become the church. Or so we hope—the parable leaves us with the invitation, not the arrival. Which is the way of the “kingdom.” But the people who would be coming would not be the ones to bring honor to the host in that culture’s worldview, but instead would bring shame, which God’s invitation erases. And so the nature of the dinner is transformed. Banquets of the rich were highly-organized, controlled, predictable—but this new dinner is spontaneous, risky, permission-giving, downright contagious.
The new dinner of the emergent church would even go beyond the parable by taking the food out of the house. The host would become the guest. The dinner would be made together. The welcoming table becomes a truly moveable feast.
So should be the spirit of the church, of our lives.