A Call To Integrated Lives and Churches: Reflections On Reading Slow Church

One of our families early encounters with missional church was being a part of Bluer (now Renewal Vineyard) in Minneapolis.  I often remember Pastor John Musick's expression for sin: "disintegrated lives."  It really caught the essence of all the ways our culture tries to pull us away from the holistic, integrated lives God desires for us to live.  Sadly, it's often hard to see how contemporary Evangelical church offers anything different from the compartmentalized lives corporate America sells us on a daily basis.

In light of this, it's refreshing when a book like Slow Church by Chris Smith and John Patterson comes along.  This book paints a picture of church that is counter-cultural to the fast-paced, compartmentalized lives many of us live.  Borrowing from the language of the Slow Food Movement, it challenges the reader to think about how to make life and church more integrated without resorting to the "church-bashing" that can sometimes find it's way into missional church literature.

Chris and John are not professional clergy trying to sell you on their program for building a church.  They are self-professed amateurs in the truest sense of the word: lovers of church-life that seek to see it integrate into every other part of their lives.  They live in two different communities and have found their way into congregations that encourage their ability to live these principles out.  Drawing from their own experiences, both healthy and unhealthy, they provide an appealing vision of what church could be.

The book is laid out in a very accessible format that anyone can pick up and enjoy.  Chris and John begin by presenting a theological basis for the type of church they desire to see.  They follow-up with nine characteristics of slow church broken down into three "courses:" ethics, ecology, and economy.  Throughout the book they revisit several of the challenges that contemporary culture pose to living out these characteristics and ask whether the cost of acquiescing to the status quo is worth what we appear to gain by following the cultural norms of a society living at supersonic speed.  Slow Church is not simply a manual on how to "do church."  It is a call to live a more integrated life that will naturally include a different approach to how church integrates with that life.

During a time of great stress in his life, King David wrote a hymn that invited others to "taste and see that the LORD is good." (Psalm 34:8)  Slow Church invites readers who are worn down by our fast-paced culture to take the same taste and discover the goodness that can be found in living and worshipping at the pace God desires for us.  For those of us who are professional clergy, it is a challenge to create the type of faith communities that allow the weary to enter in and slowing taste the goodness of God at a pace that is healthy for their soul.  For those of us who consider ourselves "amateurs," true lovers of church-life, it is a call to examine our own pace of life and find ways to make it more "tasty" to those around us.  For both groups of readers Slow Church is a meal worth tasting and digesting.

Wisdom Found Under A Bridge

During our missional communities time serving friends without homes alongside Food 4 Souls yesterday, we served a different route than we usually travel.  Though we missed the friends we've made on our normal route, this change gave us the opportunity to meet Fred.  Fred was travelling along with one of the outreach workers from Food 4 Souls.

Fred is a twenty-five-year veteran of life on the streets.  Most recently, he spent 10 months living at a large camp on Davidson St. in Indianapolis that was cleared out by the city in August 2013.  After that experience he decided to go it alone in another area of town while maintaining relationship with some of the people he had met at Davidson St.  Fred is now getting ready to take a step back into life in the real world.

As Fred told his story, he said the key for him finally coming to a place that he could be ready to reenter society was when he began to be honest with himself about the causes of his homelessness.  It was that honesty with himself that gave him the freedom to seek the help he needed to change his life.  "If I had met you ten years ago," he said, " I would have given you all kinds of excuses of why I was homeless.  When I got honest, I began to admit the problem was within me."  That change in perspective helped him to realize he could hope for a better life as well.

As he continued to share his story, I couldn't help but think of how many people have yet to discover the freedom that comes from self-honesty.  Whether we live under a bridge or in a nice house in the suburbs, our tendency is to try to pretend we have everything together.  If something goes wrong, it must be someone else's fault.  It is only when we give up hiding behind a facade and become honest with ourselves that we find true freedom to carve out a greater existence in our lives.

This is the nature of grace, too.  It is when we come clean with our shortcomings that Jesus meets us there to offer us freedom to be different.  So often we think we need to pretend to be perfect among the people we gather with in church or in the workplace.  A healthy Christian community, though, offers space for everyone to be honest with themselves and each other recognizing that we all, in a sense, live as beggars on the street in desperate need of God's grace.

Those of us who live in suburbia are not that far removed from our friends without homes we see on the street each day.  It does us well to listen to the wisdom we can learn from those that most of society would pass over.

Nurturing the Souls of Royalty

This past Sunday my friend and ministry coach, Troy Cady, visited our missional community to observe the work we do with friends without homes and to encourage our fledgling community in our work.  As part of the evening he shared one of his Playfull Faith stories about creation (learn more here) and the special place humanity held as stewards of God's creation.  He tied it to the mission of our community in restoring a piece of what God had created in our daily connections with people.

What stood out to me in this was the royal nature God placed in humanity as we relate to the rest of His creation.  He is the Great King and He chooses to share a bit of His dominion with humanity, which was created in His image.  In that sense, each person has a seed of royalty in them that few of us ever fully realize.  It is the call of those who follow Jesus to encourage others in finding their authentic royal nature.  As a leader it is also a challenge with each of the hats I wear to remember that good spiritual leadership includes being a good steward of the souls of royalty.

First off, as a husband and father, it affects the way I lead my family.  I need to consider every decision with a focus on what it will do to encourage the fulfillment of God's royal purpose in my wife and each of my daughters.  What can I do to help them realized the full potential of this royal nature in them?  Am I encouraging them and creating the environment to live life to the fullest and not settle for the status quo society seeks to draw us all into?

Secondly, as the team leader of a fledgling missional community, how am I caring for the souls of those God has entrusted to our community?  Am I helping them to discover the unique place in God's plan or simply using people to accomplish my goals and agendas?  In my role as a pastoral leader, I need to keep these questions in front of me always.

As part of our community's mission we spend time serving friends without homes living in tent cities around our city.  This is another area where we need to remember that we are ultimately caring for the souls of people created with the potential of a royal nature in them.  Too often in philanthropy it's easy to begin to think of people as projects and loose sight of their humanity.  It's important to remember that God's desire is that our friends discover their true nature as part of His royal family.

Finally, as a part-time computer teacher, how am I encouraging my students to exercise dominion over the world of technology and not simple be consumers of what others create for them?  How can I design my projects to help bring this out of them?  How do I encourage them to think of themselves in light of their royal potential?

We are each called to be part of God's royal family.  What are we doing to live and lead that way?

Finding the Right Fit

"Then Saul gave David his own armor—a bronze helmet and a coat of mail. David put it on, strapped the sword over it, and took a step or two to see what it was like, for he had never worn such things before.
'I can’t go in these,' he protested to Saul. 'I’m not used to them.' So David took them off again. He picked up five smooth stones from a stream and put them into his shepherd’s bag. Then, armed only with his shepherd’s staff and sling, he started across the valley to fight the Philistine." - 1 Samuel 17:38 - 40 (NLT)

I've been meditating on this passage the past couple of weeks and how it applies to my own quest for a missional form of church and the quest of other missional practitioners like me.

The context of this scene is the Old Testament story when a giant from an enemy nation threatens Israel and challenges them to send their best man out for a fight. No one is willing to take on this challenge until the younger brother of a few of the soldiers shows up. He has no military training or equipment, so King Saul gives young David his own armor to use. After trying it on, David figures out it doesn't work for him and goes back to the simple weapons he is used to. The problem wasn't that Saul's armor was bad. It just wasn't the right fit for David.

Many of us pursuing a call to missional ministry have likely had times when we felt like young David in this story. The methods others try to give us feel a lot like the armor Saul was trying to give David. In over ten years of trying to pursue this call, I've had to shed many pieces of other people's methods because they didn't fit what God was calling me to. Sometimes I've even picked up similar methods again, hoping that somehow things would be different, only to realize they still didn't fit as much as I wished they would.

In the shedding of poorly fitting methods many emotions in both the one offering assistance and the one who is shedding it can ruin the relationship if the parties are not careful. The problem lies in seeing the decision as being a statement of good or bad instead of simply being an issue of finding the right fit. Fans of the traditional methods may feel personal rejection because these methods have worked so well for them and they can't understand why it wouldn't work for everyone the same way. Those of us trying to pursue a missional call can easily give in to a feeling of smugness about how superior our methods are to the "out of date methods of the past." The healthier response is to not interpret these events as judgments of good and bad, but merely an issue of finding the right fit.

As Diakonos, the missional community I now lead, begins to take on more form I find myself going through another season of shedding things that don't fit what God wants to do in this community. In the midst of these seasons, it's a constant battle to remind myself and those around me that it's not an issue of those things being bad. They simply don't fit what God is doing here. This is a path that needs to be traveled with great care, but hopefully the end of the journey is worth the trip.

The Consistent Nature Of A Missional Vision

I was recently sitting down with a friend discussing different aspects of the ministries we lead.  As we neared the end of the conversation he mentioned that Village Soul (the ministry I officially launched just over four years ago) had changed.  This struck me as a little odd because, from my perspective, my vision and mission has not changed that much since even before I launched Village Soul.  Some of the concrete outlets by which we may carry out the vision may have changed, but the vision itself is consistent.

This lead me to think a bit about the nature of a missional vision.  Most people who are committed to a missional vision of church will tell you it's about reproducing followers of Jesus in the context where people gather.  As opposed to people coming to us to hear about Jesus, the missional believer and church bring Jesus to others on their turf in very practical ways.  This essentially has been my vision for life for more years than I care to admit.

Since many of us, myself included, grew up with an idea of church as an institution with meetings and programs that you invite people to for them to learn about Jesus, it can sometimes be challenging to wrap that thinking around the liquid nature of missional church.  It's much like water will take on the form of the container (or context) it finds itself in.  It falls from the sky as rain or snow; depending on the season and where you live.  It runs off into a drain, stream, or river.  Eventually, it makes its way to a lake, reservoir or ocean.  Some ends up flowing through aqueducts and pipes to houses where it comes out of a  tap into a glass, bowl, or pitcher.  From the outside it may look like the water has changed, but it's core nature is the same no matter what container it finds itself in.  In the same way, a missional vision will be consistent even as it remains flexible to the context in which it finds itself.

This difference in perspective does not mean one interpretation or the other is right or wrong.  It simply is a difference of perspective.  For the missional practitioner, the challenge is to be aware of the context in which we present our vision and adapt the language of the vision to that context.  It is also a challenge to be comfortable with others seeing change where we see a consistency.  It's simply the nature of the work we do.

Trusting The Only One Who Can Help In Times Like These

Winter has arrived in central Indiana on a level people here haven't experienced in twenty years.  The family and I enjoyed playing in the snow that kept falling through the day yesterday (nearly 12" total).  Today we will hunker down in the house while the temperatures plummet to levels we haven't seen since we left Minnesota (possibly -21 F by tomorrow morning).  As we experience the luxuries of a warm home on a frigid day, I can't help but think of the friends for whom days like this are a matter of life and death.

Saturday I spent part of the afternoon with a friend visiting those living in the allies and in tent cities around downtown Indianapolis.  We brought extra blankets with us to give them something more to bundle up in during the coldest of days.  We talked with people and encouraged them to find shelter in one of the emergency shelters the city had set up.  In the end, though, we knew we would eventually return to our homes with no idea what would happen to them during these days.

Occasions like this are times when phrases like "all we can do is pray" hit home for me.  As much as I want to serve and help others, there are limits to what I am capable of doing.  This is when I have to place my friends in the hands of God and trust that He will watch over them.  Our resources are finite, but God's resources are infinite.  So, as I go about my routine today, I will be in a constant mode of prayer for those who are in God's hands today and hope for happy reunions and stories of survival when we are reunited on the other side of this weather event.

"What If"s" for 2014

As I look ahead to what God has in store for 2014, I'm asking myself a lot of "What if?" questions about the future of our Diakonos Community (the missional community we are leading).  The answers give me a glimpse of what God can do through through our little, but growing community.

1. What if we created a faith community where those who serve people on the margins of society could gather with those being served to worship together and learn from each other?
2. What if we created a faith community where people in need were not simply seen as projects, but embraced as friends?
3. What if we created a faith community where people can wrestle fully with the implications of following Jesus without fear of being judge or having others offer them quick fixes that shortcut the work of the Holy Spirit?
4. What if we created a faith community where people didn't feel the need to impress one another with their spirituality, but could learn to live in an environment of God's grace and love as we spur one another on toward love and good deeds?

These are the goals I'm pursuing for 2014.