Class Reflection for Wednesday Week 10

Last Wed.  was the last class and I appreciated the discussion about what we’ve learned.  Since I’m at the end of my seminary career, the way I defined the Kingdom and the church’s mission on the first day of class and on last Wed. was not all that different.  Right before I took Dr. Bolger’s class, I took a class with Dr. Beaton, where in fact, many of the same issues came up, and where we talked about what the Kingdom was…what Jesus was trying to do in the first place etc..but this class has really helped me nonetheless.  In fact, I think its because I am taking it at the end of my studies that it’s particulary helpful.  Although I may have been able to come up with the right words before to describe the Kingdom, these words didn’t carry the same weight with me as they do now…these words are more rooted in my own personal theology now…..these words have more meaning to me.  Like many people in the class, I sometimes struggled with the free-form format…the lack of strict lectures, and the  sense that the class was low on content.  But the readings were great, and it was definately worthwhile to discuss the readings in groups…to chew on them.  I think Dr. Bolger proved himself to be right when he let us know the method to his madness….we won’t really be able to appropriate what we learn unless we do something ourselves with the material…instead of just being passive recipients of the material.  And trying to see how these things work out in a concrete situation is great…although difficult for me.  I tend to exsist comfortably in the abstract in school…although ministry and the church is very important to me.  So of all the “practical” ministry classes that I’ve had in seminary, this one may prove to be the most influential for me…I’m really planning on using my case study to begin something new at my church…and I can’t say that I’ve felt that way for other case studies that I’ve done at Fuller. 

Class Reflection for Monday of Week 10

The issue of authority and leadership was discussed in class today, and it’s one that I have many questions about.  On the one hand, the model for leadership that Dr. Bolger has been espousing–a Trinitarian one–stresses mutuality and equality and consensus.  These are wonderful things to stress, but what about the models of leadership we have in the New Testament?  When Paul writes to the Cornithians, “for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel.  Therefore I urge you to imitate me,” (4:15-16) is this a consensus model of leadership?  Granted, Paul previously qualifies his exhortations in 1 Cor. when he describes Apollos and himself as “God’s co-workers,” (3:9)  and not as ultimate authorities over against God’s authority. But, although Paul attributes his authority to what is only given to him by God, he takes this authority and runs with it.  Anyway, this isn’t a thorough look at how Paul plays with issues of authority in the New Testament, but that said, there seems to be some tension between how Paul conceives of authority and a trinitarian model for authority.  How should we reconcile this tension?  No doubt, many authoritarian church leaders have “humbly” attributed their authority to what God gives them, but this attribution doesn’t necessary temper a top-down approach to leadership. Of course, these are all hermeneutical issues.  We could also pick and choose  episodes from Christ’s ministry that support more of an authoritarian style of leadership just as much as we might develop a servant-leadership model on the basis of this ministry.  So, which lens should we use? But that question brings us to a veritable dead-end, considering what a quagmire hermeneutical/epistomological issues can be. I think I need to take another class from Nancy Murphy.

Class Reflection for Wednesday of Week 9

Today we first got into groups to review our rough drafts on our case studies and then Dr. Bolger lectured about the shape that many action plans for change in a church can take.  Essentially this model was created in response to a desire to move a relatively large church in a new direction and so, if our contexts don’t fit that description exactly, we will have to alter the model some.  Actually, right now I’m wondering about the angle I should take on my context, and this will affect how I appropriate this action plan model.  The thing is that I began the study of my context from the understanding that we should look back on a past ministry experience and then try and figure out what we might have done differently.  At the same time, we could also take the another approach and try to anticipate a future context.  The thing about my context is that it has ended…the fellowship group no longer exists, and the church is ripe for a new fellowship group.  In some ways, it makes more sense for me to imagine what I could do now and in the future to facilitate a new fellowship instead going back into a situation that no longer exists, per se.  That is, the church, the neighborhood, its history, ect. , is all still there and so there’s definate overlap, but if I chose to think about future possibilities more, it will affect how I plan on bringing the model to bear on this context.

Class Reflection Monday of Week 9

Today Dr. Bolger gave an interesting lecture on “church growth” and approached the concept positively by reviewing how McGavern thought about it.  Essentially, in India, McGavern noticed how churches didn’t grow when potential converts were asked to jump social boundaries and adopt a new culture.  So McGavern thought about how the gospel might become inculturated in a specific context, and how its expression could authentically reflect a particular culture while also stay true to itself.  The gospel expressed in this way was his vision for a “People Movement.” Lots of good questions were raised about this kind of vision for missions and the church.  Dr. Bolger talked about the specifically modern/western development of a secular sphere and how this concept is foreign to many cultures and, thus, should be seen critically.   And yet the secular sphere, and the individualism that it implies–which we rightly criticize–is a direct outgrowth of a Lutheran hermenutic and of the great American invention, the separation of church and state.  Granted much more (probably such insidious things as materialism and consumerism) than Luther and the freedom of religion go into making us who we are today, but before we go and denounce individualism altogether (and modernism, which gave rise to the concept) we should remember that the concept helped put an end to all the wars and persecutions that ravished a Christian Europe.  No doubt, it also had something to do with what Jesus said, but for some reason there seems to be something cyclical about how the church ignores or obscures what he had to say about killing each other.

Class Reflection for Wednesday of Week 8

Today Dr. Bolger wasn’t there, and so we had a short class, but a good discussion nonetheless.  The t.a.’s did an excellent job facilitating the discussion on Fitch.  The class helped me have a more critical eye with which to view Fitch’s method.  I was surprised by some of the polarized reactions in my small group over the book. But it’s almost as if Fitch wants to create that kind of polarization…his critique of modernism is so sweeping and his embrace of postmodernism so total.  And for what he was trying to do–to incite change within the church, perhaps his oversimplified approach to these philosophical systems, used to sum up centuries (for modernism, at least), was the best way to go about it.  I suppose that’s what the terms modernism/postmodernism are good for…they can help us sum up an incredibly complex set of events and ideas into a single word.  And then we can use this word as a tool (or a weapon, perhaps) to fight our different battles.  Perhaps that was what certain people in the class were objecting to.  That Fitch’s “postmodern” approach had a kind of modernist/positivist feel to  it…by using the word as a tool or a weapon.  But I don’t think it’s modernist to use language as a tool…that’s just what it means to use language. But, there are ways to use language with integrity…and perhaps Fitch was substituting postmodern language for Kingdom language too much.  All this is to say, that the relationship between postmodernism, modernism, and Kingdom is increadibly complex.  For one, does any of us really know what these words mean or signify?  Although we may agree on a common definition for each,  the terms signify so much that it seems hard to control their usage.

Class Reflection for Monday of Week 8

Today we discussed our short case study papers together in groups.  Personally, for my own writing process it wasn’t all that helpful.  Most of the constructive criticisms that I received and those that I gave were suggestions that details be added and main points be elaborated on. These were obvious critiques in light of the limits of the first paper.  That said, I definately liked the idea of sharing our work with each other and anticipate that we will benefit from each other’s comments when there’s more to comment on.  And beginning the process did elicit good questions from the class about what some of the expectations are for the final paper.  But this process is somewhat difficult for me and, in fact, I don’t think I did very well on this first paper.  I kept wanting to approach it linearly and build as I go instead of laying out main ideas with few details attached…but of course, all my papers tend to be too long…perhaps because I get lost in the details.  So this will be a stretching exercise for me.

Class Reflection for Wednesday of Week 7

Last Wednesday Dr. Bolger presented us with an outline of “Kingdom Perspectives on Mission.” Essentially it was a list of key things that characterize the Kingdom.  And he asked us to think about how these characteristics could develop in the contexts of our case studies.  One question that the class had was on the difference between this model of mission, a Kingdom-driven model, and a trinitarian model for mission.  Dr. Bolger said that they essentially led to the same conclusions, but a Kingdom model might be more didactic than a trinitarian model.  Jesus describes the Kingdom in the Sermon on the Mount and so he is teaching us something whereas a trinitarian model seems more concerned with form than content.  That is, because there is only so much we can say about the Godhead, the metaphors we use for it are restricted to imagining how the three persons in the trinity interact with eachother in mutuality and love.  Jesus, however, told us some more specific things about the Kingdom like “love your enemies.”  I think that it’s important to hold onto both these models as ways to think about mission.  Although, as Lohfink discussed, the Kingdom of God implies that there is only ruler and therefore all exist in egalitarian relationships under God, the way that Kingdom language is sometimes taken does not always promote an egalitarian structure.  Or, at least, that’s an internal criticism that lots of Catholic theologians level against their church.  The idea of the church as a sacrament of the Kingdom led pre-Vatican II church leaders to adopt a hierarchical model.  And so, in thinking about the structure of the church, we should perhaps take our cue more from a trinitarian model, but in thinking about what should happen within that structure, a Kingdom model can be more informative.

Shorter Case Study Paper

Intro

“What connection does Jesus’ message of the coming Kingdom have to the church’s message today?”  An answer to this question can inform the broader question, “What should the church look like today?” As a way of addressing these questions and as a way of narrowing a response to them, this paper will look at a specific ministry to see what it might mean for Jesus’ message of the Kingdom to shape a specific context.

Context

The specific ministry I have in mind is a young adult’s fellowship group that existed for a few years in
Hollywood.  The group was attached to a large, prominent evangelical/mainline Protestant church with a history of teaching and sending out many evangelical leaders of the last century.  The church is situated on the boarder of two neighborhoods, separated by economics and class.  On one side, the neighborhood is characterized by trendy coffee shops and boutiques catering to an upwardly mobile cliental that live close by.  On the other side, the neighborhood is more working class and hosts an immigrant population as well as a number of homeless people.  The leadership of the larger church body had been exclusively male, while the leadership of the young adult’s group involved many co-leaders, male and female, who were picked from the group.

What the Kingdom of God Might Look Like Here

Some of the problems faced by the group and which eventually led to its demise were the socio-economic differences in the surrounding neighborhood and those within the makeup of the group as well.  That is, as a young adult’s group in the middle of Hollywood it attracted many well-educated transplants to the city, who were interested in beginning profitable careers in the film industry.  So, at first, the group was mostly homogenous, economically and socially, and racially as well—it was a predominantly anglo group.  But over time, the group began to attract people who lived in the poorer of the two neighborhoods.  This addition brought a welcome diversity to the group, but it also asked the group to grow and mature in response to the different needs that these newer members or visitors brought with them.  Some of these needs were physical, i.e., the homeless visitors often were in need of food.  But many of these needs were emotional and spiritual as well.  As the number of members with deeper needs grew, the leaders of the group—many young twenty-somethings with specific career goals—felt overwhelmed by the scope and range of the needs—so much so, that the group eventually ended.  So the felt presence of the Kingdom of God in this context would address both these needs of the newer members as well as the sense of being overwhelmed that the leaders experienced.  The Kingdom’s healing and freedom would have been especially transforming in this context—where people might be healed from emotional and spiritual brokenness, where people might be able to get their physical needs met, and where burdens might be better shared between the young adult’s fellowship group church and the surrounding communities. 

Activities

For the ministry to thrive in this neighborhood, partnerships between the larger church, the young adult’s fellowship group, the surrounding businesses, local social service agencies, and local government would have to develop and grow.  So, for instance, the young adult’s group could form relationships with some of the older members of the congregation.  The establishment of such bonds could respond to a number of potentially unKingdom-like practices in the church.  For one—using David Fitch’s assessment of the North American Church as a lens—the larger Church, hosting the young adult’s group, tends to promote isolation between small groups and ministries so that there is a fragmented sense of community where formational stories are not as easily shared between members; i.e., many of the young adults who came to the fellowship had no real connection to the larger body and could come, get their needs met, and leave without having to invest in any real commitments.  Also, in creating tighter bonds between the different fellowships, the burdens felt by the young adult fellowship leaders could be shared with older, wiser, members of Christ’s Body.  Making connections between the small groups within the church is just one example of how the Kingdom might become more rooted within the activities of the church, and another step would be to make connections with organizations outside the larger church body.

Conclusion

In looking at the relationship between God’s Kingdom and the Church, Gerhard Lohfink asked, “what was Jesus doing in his ministry?” And Lohfink offered that a large part of what Jesus was doing was gathering a community around him to partake in God’s eschatological Kingdom.  So first and foremost, the Church becomes a truer sign of the Kingdom when it is able to create real community.  The young adult’s group that I am looking at suffered from the fragmentation and isolation between and within the various communities that it encountered.  So, in order for it to embrace more Kingdom-like practices such fragmentation and isolation would first need to be healed.  

Class Reflection for Wednesday Week 6

Today Dr. Bolger continued his discussion on the Emerging Church.  One thing that struck me about his description today was how inefficient life in an emerging church might be.  When I was on leadership for a young adults group, it was my group’s job to lay out a plan for social service.  We were all sharing the responsibility for the group and decided that before we did anything we should pray and seek God’s guidance.  This, of course, was an important step.  But, I don’t know if it was because of the similar temperments among us, or because none of us were really profoundly dedicated to social service at the time, but we prayed and talked for weeks, but we never once organized anything.  I think we all enjoyed the fellowship and discussions we were having, but there was no one who took the initiative to spearhead a project, and it wasn’t immediatly clear whose job it was to rally the group into action.  Perhaps the problem was the make-up of the group…we all had a natural affinity for one another, but perhaps we couldn’t complement one another.  Also another problem might have been that we really didn’t have a solid theology for what we were wanting to do.  I think most of us were in the group to form friendships, and so by meeting and praying we were able to get our needs met, and the idea of service was secondary.  Bu perhaps if we had had a vision of being formed first for service and that our fellowship might come out of that we would have been more active.  In any case, as I think about my case study, I will want to think about the make up of  a leadership team and how to actually promote action in a consensus model of leadership.

Book Review for Week 7: Fitch, David, E., The Great Giveaway (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2005)

David E. Fitch is  a pastor of Life on the Vine Christian Community of the Christian and Missionary Alliance in Long Grove, Illinois, and is adjunct professor of ministry, theology, and ethics at Northern Seminary.

The Great Giveaway by David Fitch is a sweeping critique of the Evangelical Church in North America.  His thesis is that the message, purpose, and ethos of the larger Evangelical Church have been co-opted by, or have been given away to, the meta-narrative of capitalistic liberalism, and so this church has lost touch with its own meta-narrative given to it by scripture and Christian tradition.  After laying out this problem in the introduction, Fitch then devotes each of his chapters to different “marks” of the church, how each has been corrupted by this alien meta-narrative, and then he offers suggestions for how the Evangelical Church can reclaim these marks to become more authentically Christian.

The lens through which Fitch carries out his critique is postmodernism.  As a philosophical system, or school, which is essentially driven by a critique of modernism, postmodernism gives Fitch the tools with which he can examine the Evangelical Church’s compromising relationship with capitalistic liberalism—which is essentially modernism’s favorite son offering its own version of salvation, one which need be distinguished from the salvation offered by the favorite son of Christianity.  In fact, the main problem with modernist assumptions is that they don’t take into account the need for such distinctions.  Modernism, confidently wielding the tools of the scientific method, does not just believe that reality is all of one piece, but it mistakenly believes that the scientific method offers the only hermeneutic necessary for discovering this reality.  Postmodernism, however, questions such confidence. For instance, the truth buried in the Bible cannot just be dug up by an individual who can employ the historical critical method sufficiently.  Rather, such an individual brings a whole host of assumptions created by her situation in time and space to her reading of the Bible, and so all knowledge is a cultural construct.  For Fitch, then, the gospel cannot be understood outside of a strong, self-conscious community, which takes seriously the need to create disciples formed by a Biblical meta-narrative.  So the thrust of Fitch’s critique is leveled against the individualism that has invaded the Evangelical church and against the economic system that has, as its foundation, the promotion of the individual over the community.

In terms of my case study, I have been thinking about whether or not the phenomenon of a “Young Adults Fellowship” group can even be faithful to the type of vision that Fitch is promoting.  Because such a group often took the place of church for many of these 20-somethings, there was a way in which they were isolated from fellowship with both older and younger Christians who might be able to enrich their culture thereby giving them more of a “story” to bear fruit in their lives.  The tendency of Evangelical churches to separate and isolate the generations from each other, where those with a natural affinity for one another easily commune, seems antithetical to the gospel vision where Christ creates a new community of people, despite their differences. And can Fitch’s vision of the type of support offered in a healthy Christian community be adequately embodied in such a single generation group? His critique of the Evangelical
Church’s relationship to capital seems especially incisive.  When we bemoan the radical discrepancies between the rich and the poor and try to rally Evangelical support for our causes, how much of what we are trying to do is an uncritical embrace of a capitalistic ethos, which says that having the utter freedom to purchase is one of the greatest goods there is. Rather, Fitch offers that a greater good is promoting a mutual interdependence between members of a church community so that when needs arise people don’t immediately look for an economic escape from the freedom of want but look towards each other for other kinds of support as well.  But this support seems to necessarily imply the participation of a range of members at different stages of life.  So, for my case study, I will want to introduce a model of multi-generational kinds of fellowship.