blog one another

From Eternity to Here — Q&A with author Frank Viola

Frank Viola has a new book out, From Eternity to Here, that looks like it's designed to raise our sights and capture us with a larger vision of what God has been up to all along. I haven't read the book yet, but I got the chance to ask a couple of questions in a virtual interview:

Me: You talk about how we cannot do anything for God, but that it is actually Christ living in us. How can I get more of this, and get out of his way? (Or is that the $6,000,000 question?)

Frank Viola: All of the exhortations in the NT to live by Christ are set in a corporate context. Most all the epistles are written to believing communities that had a shared life in Christ. They were not written to individuals. So the first thing is to be part of your native habitat … a local, living, breathing community of believers who are learning how to live by Christ. Some practical help from someone who has gained some experience in communal living in Christ is of great help as well. Paul, Peter, Timothy, etc. were people who served in this capacity in the first century.

Me: If it's all about rediscovering an eternal perspective of God's purposes, do church forms and models matter?

Frank Viola: Yes, very much so. The eternal purpose of God is expressed corporately. Thus those church forms and models that best express God’s eternal purpose should be encouraged and approved. Those that violate the eternal purpose or take away from it should not. I address this very question in detail in my book Reimagining Church.

A number of other bloggers are participating in the interview — kind of like a press conference spread across different blogs — and some have posted book reviews. I want to highlight two I met through Twitter and hope to meet in real life: Chad "Captain" Estes (@Chad_Estes) writes Captain's Blog, and Joel Black (@JoelBLK) writes Irreligious Canuck. If you like me, odds are good you'll like them.

Worship Star

Ha ha! Normal people won't get the references, but for anyone who's led worship, this is funny!

Wait, maybe it's not funny. (h/t: jonnybaker)

Places of Prayer (Director's cut)

What helps you get into a heart-position of prayer? Where are your places?

Where Is the Emerging Church Headed?

Photo by will_hybrid (license), adapted by Jon Reid

Where is the emerging church headed? What direction is it taking?

One of the problems with trying to answer such a question is that "emerging church" means many different things. I think this is because God is doing many different things, working large shifts in the church in the new cultural contexts we find ourselves in.

For me, the emerging church saved my faith. My mid-life crisis consisted of having the foundational, propositional arguments of "reasons to believe in Jesus (and what that means)" be torn apart. Through the emerging church (which was then called "postmodern" Christianity) I learned that

a) I am not crazy,
b) I am not alone,
c) Jesus is new all over again.

The difficulty of trying to label anything "emerging church" is that God meets each of us at a different point of need. I bet many, many folks can identify with the a-b-c process outlined above (not crazy, not alone, Jesus is still the center). But we start from different points and are presently at different points. And isn't that OK?

So perhaps instead of asking, "Where is the emerging church headed?" a better question is "Where am I headed?" or "Where am I taking the emerging church?" I want to highlight four people whose responses resonate with me:

Beyond worship music

Photo by timparkinson (license)

Worship. I hear a lot of teaching about how "it's more than music," but have yet to see non-musical worship become a consistent part of corporate worship in American churches. "Alternative worship" has steadily grown in Europe over the past decade. Decade, as in the past 10 years! Why hasn't it taken root in the United States?

Two Sundays ago, our church did something fairly bold: In order to give the "worship teams" (that is, the musicians) a break, we did not have a band. No singing. Instead, the pastor led a time of non-musical worship. It was really more like an interactive sermon, in which he would describe something, then invite everyone to participate in a brief exercise:

• Saying the Lord's prayer together
• Silent meditation
• Declaring praise with words ("God I worship you because you are ____")
• Body postures (raised hands, then kneeling)

This worked well. For "praise with words," we were given a chance to write a few words and read them aloud. I wrote and shared my "Psalm by one who is unemployed". But that experience left me wondering: Why is this special? Why can't it be a regular part of corporate worship?

Friday links: Not church growth, but church multiplication

Twitter updates can be about anything you can imagine, but one of the most common uses is sharing links to interesting web content. Many blogs have regular "Friday links" posts, so today I share some web pages I found through my involvement on Twitter related to multiplying churches (as opposed to growing them).

Todd Hunter: Church is a byproduct

Much has been said about ways to improve, deconstruct, or fix church. …But in our concern, passion and zeal, have we been barking up the wrong tree?

Recently, I posted Where does real church happen? Big vs. small in which I argued that churches should emphasize small gatherings over large gatherings. And I still think I have a point, harrumph. But Keith Seckel gave me loving slap of caution in his comment. I think he and I are on the same page more often than not, so I didn't quite grasp what he was getting at.

Today Keith is live-twittering updates from a Kingdom and Missionality training event. It looks like it's organized by Dr. Winn Griffin of Allelon, featuring teaching by Todd Hunter. A couple of tidbits helped me understand Keith's caution to me. (Twitter updates are limited to 140 characters, so what we get is little nuggets of information.)

Church is not vendor of goods/services. It *is* the product, & :. not worth focus. God is PRODUCER & worthy of focus

The size of church is not ultimate. Church itself is only derivative. From rule/reign of God. Mindset/worldview of God

—Answering a question on Facebook, Keith explained further:
Corollary to church as just the product. The heart of The Producer is more important and is simply that from which the church is derived. So church is secondary. HE is primary -- but we focus on church so much...

Keith church model (mega/seeker/small/house) can't be starting place to foster mindset. But with God's mindset, any model can work.

Where does real church happen? Big vs. small

Today we were pretty sick as a family -- lots of coughing and sneezing. So we stayed home rather than go to church and spread the love. And as we stayed home, I thought:

What we call "church" has very little church happening:

What we don't call "church" is where most church happens:

Church: All bass-ackwards?

I ran across this statement somewhere in my Twitter wanderings. I don't know who to credit, but I have to pass it on:

Churches don't make disciples. Disciples make churches.

This hit me. I have often toyed with the idea of planting a church, and Kay has always insisted that this was a bad idea. My attempt at starting a Jesus Dojo came off all wrong, because I tried to gather people and say, "We're going on this mission." It was awkward because I was setting a direction before anybody knew who the other people were or what was going on.

I think I finally get it. Kay liked this quote. We love making disciples! But we hate discipleship programs.

"It" and me

I went into last Sunday's church gathering with skepticism. My skepticism went up when they said we were going to watch a prerecorded message from a Willow Creek "Leadership Summit." The speaker said that you can compare two churches with exactly the same worship, message and programs, and find that one church "has it" but the other doesn't. My skepticism went on full alert when the speaker said he would tell us what "it" is, especially because he has written a book about "it."

He said, "I don't know."

At this, I sat up and began to take notice.

Much to my surprise, he described ways that getting caught up in church ministry can cause you to lose "it." He spoke of not copying what you see in any other church because what you can see is not "it." He spoke of the need for failure because if you want different results, you'll have to do what is not being done. He spoke of focus and choosing what not to do. And he spoke of following your passions.

So I asked myself, what are the things I am passionate about in a faith community? Off the top of my head, I came up with: