Contours of Post-Christendom Vineyard Ministry

UPDATE: Frank Emmanuel, a Vineyard pastor in Ottawa, adds his thoughts on why we’re in for a hard road ahead. In my experience, Canucks tend to be ahead of the curve regarding this issue and it’s good to see a leader like Frank pitching in his perspective.

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Part 1: Did Tony Jones Kill the Vineyard?
Part 2: Vineyard Churches at the Crossroads

As I mentioned, Jenell and I huddled with a small group of Vineyard pastors last weekend to compare notes on the experience of leading non-traditional, missional churches. We were hardly able to scratch the surface on most issues, but here are some of the main topics that came up:

Common origins and experience
For the most part everyone’s stories had at least one common theme: Nobody lacked significant leadership experience and everyone had led in an attractional church (some successfully, some not), which led to a high level of frustration with the overall lack of discipleship fostered by the attractional approach. Yet, nobody in the room was willing to condemn attractional churches. Still, everyone was generally in agreement that, as a rule, it is predisposed to more shallow congregations on the whole.

A time of liminality
Everyone seemed to have a long list of anecdotal evidence that attractional/church-growth oriented congregations are rapidly failing – yet nobody feels there are established, sustainable alternatives. One person basically said, “I think this is going to be really hard for a long time to come.” Nobody disagreed.

High commitment to kingdom theology and the “radical middle”
Everyone spoke of Kingdom Theology and the Radical Middle as key underpinnings which kept them strongly rooted in the Vineyard, even though they felt the association overall was largely quiet concerning the emerging/missional movements and the ecclesiological shortcomings of attractional church.

A Sense of missional continuity prior to church-growth models
Most of the people in the room had been practicing many elements of what we now call “missional” church (i.e. use of third spaces, intentional communities, contemplative and liturgical practices, etc.) long before the missional/emerging conversations were popularized, and, more importantly, long before the church-growth movement took hold – at least as far back as the early to mid-seventies. For me this was a light-bulb moment. There’s a great deal of talk on the attractional side that missional ministry is a fad, but, whatever you may call it, the “missionary to the West” mindset seems to be both a descendant of theological shifts beginning in the 1960’s, but also a by-product of the religious fervor stemming from the Jesus Movement.

Family ministry in the missional church
This was probably the most energized conversation of the weekend. There’s a great deal of frustration with the void caused by a rejection of centralized, professional, spectator approaches to children and youth ministry. Everyone believes these approaches are bankrupt, but hardly anyone could articulate a viable missional alternative and nobody was aware of a proven approach. It was pointed out that in the absence of a compelling alternative, most parents would understandably choose to have their kids satiated in an entertaining mega-church ministry. Future-facing churches must fill this void with a biblically insightful and culturally appropriate approach to the discipleship of whole families.

Partnering with culture, making culture
There was a pretty solid body of experience in the room when it came to engaging with culture. This is understandable. Within the emerging/missional stream this has been relatively strong and the people in this group reflected that: there were examples of partnering with local government (especially schools) to fill civic needs, participating with local AIDS organizations and justice issues, creating third spaces, offering secular counseling services, and creating internet communities and arts organizations. Everyone seemed comfortable and positive about pushing forward in this direction. This, of course, isn’t exclusive to so-called missional churches. More traditional churches are making rapid progress with innovative cultural engagement; that’s always been a strength of evangelicalism. The difference is that missional churches tend to lean more toward culture making (see Andy Crouch, Culture Making), whereas traditional evangelicalism leans more toward cultural critique or cultural emulation.

One church, many congregations
Unity was identified as a major theme, and a phrase that stuck with me was, “One church, many congregations.” Particularly in the bay area Mike McCoy is working with a large collection of diverse churches to bring about an unprecedented level of cooperation and unity in that region. Here in San Diego the catch-phrase I’ve heard from several people is “a citywide church.” As Christendom winds down and Christian communities are marginalized, these kinds of networks are likely to become vital and the Vineyard has a history of ecumenism, inherited from John Wimber.

Embracing grassroots organizational dynamics
There was some spirited conversation around the subject of embracing grassroots styles of organization as particularly compatible with the values of egalitarian leadership, the priesthood of the believer, and discipleship/multiplication. A.A. and Crossfit were bought up as examples.

The critical need for inter-church missional leader relationships
Everyone agreed that the single most important benefit of the weekend was developing relationships with others who are also experimenting on the fringe. It’s easy to feel marginalized when leading a church these ways. People both in your own church and in the Vineyard at large sometimes press for more traditional indicators of success.

Returning to the simplicity of Jesus
As we wound down on Saturday afternoon, the conversation shifted to the importance of refocusing on Christ. It was pointed out that movements historically tend to take off as “roots movements,” but over time become cluttered with the minutia of bureaucracy. If the Vineyard is the speak a fresh word and a demonstrate a fresh mission to a new generation it will have to be a word/work about Christ. He is the mission.

What we didn’t discuss
There were some conversations we didn’t have time for as much of this gathering was a “get to know you” session since few of us had any significant prior relationship. In my opinion, some of the pressing conversations we could/should have in the future include:

• Gender and sexuality issues facing the church
• Science and faith conflicts
• Politics and peacemaking
• Post-Charismatic Pneumatology
• Post-Christendom theological education and leadership development
• Navigating religious and theological pluralism in and out of the church
• The role of arts and aesthetics
• Ancient/future liturgical practices and consistency
• Public evangelism in post-Christendom
• Alternative economic practices

What are your thoughts?
What are your experiences with some of these topics? Do you see them differently? Are there critical issues we missed?

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People Present:
Certainly, there were others we could have invited. The decision was made to keep this a western gathering for cost and convenience, and to keep it very small in order to maintain a manageable conversation dynamic. A few were unable to attend such as Rich and Rose Swetman from Seattle, WA, Barry Diamond from Las Vegas, NV, and Randy Knutsen from Palm Desert, CA.

• Bill Farris – Orange County, CA
  
• Pete & Gail Mosgofian – Arcata, CA
  
• Mike McCoy – Concord, CA
• Jason & Jenell Coker – North County San Diego, CA
• Eric Brown – Huntington Beach, CA
• David Ruis – Hollywood, CA

Roger Ebert and Prophetic Memory

Click here to read a delicious post by Roger Ebert about the loss of his ability to eat or drink. Read the whole thing. If you like it, come back.

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Ebert’s memory – catalyzed by a Cormac McCarthy novel – has gone into overdrive in the absence of his eating faculties. Serving him far more than mere tantalizing reminders of his current deprivations, his memories actually nourish him from the past:

I don’t drink beer, but the frosted mug evoked for me a long-buried memory of my father and I driving in his old Plymouth to the A&W Root Beer stand (gravel driveways, carhop service, window trays) and his voice saying “…and a five-cent beer for the boy.” The smoke from his Lucky Strike in the car. The heavy summer heat.

For nights I would wake up already focused on that small but heavy glass mug with the ice sliding from it, and the first sip of root beer. I took that sip over and over. The ice slid down across my fingers again and again. But never again.

These evocative snapshots of the past succor him during present trials. So much so that one gets the sense he prefers the quality of life these amplified memories provide. These are new experiences, not cheap facsimiles of old ones. Interestingly, some friends visiting him in the hospital interpret this as a work of God:

“Could be, when the Lord took away your drinking, he gave you back that memory.”

Whether my higher power was the Lord or Cormac McCarthy, those were the words I needed to hear. And from that time I began to replace what I had lost with what I remembered.

Of course, it was both the Lord and Cormac McCarthy. Through the prophetic passages of scripture we imbibe of the prophetic memory, traveling beyond our dystopian wilderness and into the paradise of the Lord (good literature can do the same to a lesser degree). Consider how Isaiah serves up prophetic memories of the future in much the same way Cormac McCarthy and Roger Ebert dine on the past:

He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. (from Isaiah 2)

And again:

Never again will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years; he who dies at a hundred
will be thought a mere youth; he who fails to reach a hundred will be considered accursed.

They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

No longer will they build houses and others live in them, or plant and others eat. For as the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people; my chosen ones will long enjoy the works of their hands. (from Isaiah 65)

For those whose prophetic memories have been amplified by faith, these experiences of the future sustain like no food can. But for the beloved community of God, they’re more than memories, for we inhabit them together when we feast at the table of fellowship, and Ebert stumbles upon it’s earthly parallel:

What I miss is the society. Lunch and dinner are the two occasions when we most easily meet with friends and family. They’re the first way we experience places far from home.

The beloved community is where we taste the promises of prophecy tangibly. It is where we chop and cook, poach and roast and savor the meal of the kingdom come – quite literally, here and now, in plain public view. It is where, and when, and how a people of the future, presently deprived of their total faculties, “experience places far from home.”

Did Tony Jones Kill The Vineyard?

Tony Jones has stirred up a bit of fire in recent days on a variety of issues, but today I want to ignore most of them and focus on one topic in his recent spat with Andrew Jones (Tall Skinny Kiwi).

In a year-end post the TSK observed that 2009 saw the core issues and practices of the Emerging Church movement (of which both Tony and Andrew are prominent figures) become enfolded into the halls of traditional denominations worldwide, rendering the EC essentially non-radical and non-offensive (and therefore, in a sense, no longer “emerging”). Tony took that to be a pronouncement of death on EC and his rather interesting response basically boils down to:

• Nobody uses the word radical correctly except a few in the academe – like me – who understand Karl Marx, and I can assure you the EC is still radical.
• I can also assure you that we in the EC are working hard to be more offensive than ever, and
• If you think were dying you should see those poor Vineyard and Calvary Chapel saps. Someone even made a movie about how lame they are.

The whole thing is pretty odd really (TSK latest response). I don’t know these guys and it seems like they’re friends, so I’m sure they’ll work it out, but what really interests me, especially as an ordained Vineyard minister, is the point Tony makes about the routinization of movements (a very important point) and the decline of the Vineyard, in particular. This provoked some interesting responses from Vineyard folk in the comments. Vineyard pastor Frank Emmanuel pushed back in a subtle, but positive way, saying, basically, “Hey, some of us are emerging too”:

As a Vineyard pastor I’ve seen far too much of [movements becoming fads] from charismatics coming to see if we were the next “it”. By God’s grace most of those folk haven’t stuck with us and we’ve been able to do something that we feel is innovative for both our denomination and for our context – and we’ve been able to think through new means of measuring what success looks like.

Another Vineyard pastor named Justin took much stronger exception to Tony’s observation:

I kind of think you took some cheap shots at Calvary Chapel and the Vineyard. As a pastor in the Vineyard (an association of churches), I can also say that your generalization of both is equally as cheap.

But I think long-time Vineyard pastor Charlie Wear stepped into the discussion with the most direct and even-handed comments:

Your Lonnie Frisbee analysis, based on the film, is misplaced. Unfortunately the film has become the story of what happened with Lonnie and the “movements” he helped birth.

However, if you want to examine the birth and then decline of a movement, the Vineyard is a great example. A little over 25 years in and it is clearly in decline. And the decline absolutely began when the leadership was passed to the next generation of leaders.

So, who’s right? Is the Vineyard dying, or in decline? I think it depends on your perspective.

Tony’s rather brief depiction of routinization is too linear: He basically says movements start out dynamic and then ossify when leadership tries to capitalize on the enthusiasm. I wholeheartedly agree with this as a universal organizational caveat, but it is highly one-dimensional. I have real concerns about the Vineyard (and the Western Church in general), but Tony’s dismissal seems rather simplistic given that thousands of churches in these two networks who each have their own quality of “life.”

Ichak Adizes has a more dynamic concept of an organization’s “lifecycle,” with stages of birth, infancy, adolescence, bureaucracy, death, etc. This follows essentially the same directional course as Tony’s simple path, but is filled with nuance. Organizations can – and often do – disrupt the cycle back and forth into different life stages. Loss of vitality has to do with more subtle issues than merely allowing professional leadership into the equation. For example, poor emotional intelligence among volunteer leaders can kill a grassroots movement far faster than institutionalization.

In this sense of the “life cycle” I tend to see organizations as a tree, going through a variety of stages depending on a variety of factors. In fact, seasons tend to affect the outward appearance of a tree more drastically and more frequently than anything else. If you didn’t know better, you’d think a tree was dead in Wintertime. Yet, it’s merely dormant. Harsh external conditions require a period of withdrawal, during which weaker branches may die necessarily. In the spring, leaps from the branches. Perhaps the Vineyard is wintering as a movement.

At the risk of breaking the metaphor, I actually see the Vineyard not as the tree, but as a branch. Christianity thrives in a myriad of forms across the scope of history and culture, and movements are merely one small part of that great, ancient, gnarly oak. Maybe the Vineyard branch is wintering, maybe it’s being pruned – or maybe it is, indeed, dying. It doesn’t really matter – the tree will continue. We will live on in it.

If you’re in the Vineyard, or an observer, what are your thoughts? Is the Vineyard in decline? What are the signs that concern you and what gives you hope?

One last note: For me there’s a kind of sad irony to Tony’s post. Overall his tone strikes me as rather sectarian and even a touch triumphalist. He seems to be implying that the EC is still winning the game against less-progressive Christian movements – as if being progressive (i.e. radical and offensive) was the point. One of the things that attracted me to the EC conversation years ago was that, despite it’s protests, it demonstrated a decidedly non-sectarian, ecumenical spirit. Back then the EC seemed like the spokesperson for that great tree of Christianity I described, where every branch/tradition was valued rather than belittled. I miss that.

UPDATE: Obituary For the Emerging Church. Clever.

Daily Show Lampoons Religious Superiority

Once again, the Daily Show has managed to brilliantly depict the post-Christian perspective of religious attempts to dominate culture. Whether you think Brit Hume’s comments were inappropriate or “right on,” it’s critical for Christians to understand that this is increasingly the water in which we swim:

I think there’s an important critique of the way religious adherents – especially Christians – have turned the practice of faith into a kind of consumer product. The irony is that by proselytizing in this way, we run the risk of belittling the seriousness of our own faith by presenting it as just another (albeit better) choice in the marketplace. What do you think? Is this incisive commentary or persecution?

What We Can (un)Learn From The Apple Tablet

The tech world is currently enraptured by the possibility of a new Apple Tablet computer. Nobody even knows if it’s real or not, but that hasn’t kept the mere hint of it’s impending announcement from bumping Apple’s stock. Even though this as-yet-unannounced slice of personal-computing heaven may be nothing but vaporware, I’m going to suggest few lessons we should (un)learn from it anyway.

So here goes: 5 missional lessons we can (un)learn from the new Apple Tablet: Continue reading…

The Myth of Selfless Giving

Jason Evans posted an interesting piece today about the problem of giving to receive, based in part on a current NPR story about conscientious capitalism in efforts like The Red Campaign. He quotes Harvard professor Richard Weissbourd from the story, who laments,

“I do feel like, as a country, we have lost a sense of morality for its own sake,” says Harvard professor and psychologist Richard Weissbourd, who teaches about moral development. “You should just be generous to be generous. You should do what’s right because it’s right, not because of what you get back.”

I protested a bit in Jason’s comments, saying there’s no such thing as selfless giving, and he asked for a deeper explanation of my position, so… Continue reading…

What Are The Boundaries of Mission?

If Hiebert reads my blog from beyond the grave, I may be in trouble.

I think there’s an important distinction between being attractional and being attractive. When we use the word “attractional” pejoratively we’re usually describing a philosophy of being event-driven. The goal is to attract as many people as possible, and the most expedient way to do so is to use the tools of marketing and hype. This allies the church with features of the popular culture that are inherently deceptive and manipulative and naturally leads to a consumer response.

But being attractive means others see something in us they want. That can be a very good thing. Isaiah 2:1-5 is a major paradigm for me in terms of mission, and it describes the Kingdom of God as attractive because of the presence of God and the pragmatic wisdom that naturally flows from God’s community. I don’t have any problem with people being drawn, my question is how do we draw them? By marketing savvy, or by power, wisdom, and character? Continue reading…

Sources For Post-Christian Exploration?

Depending on who you believe the world of Christendom is either dying, transforming, or being reborn outside the West. What everyone agrees on is this: God is moving.

My questions today are: Who is reporting on the move of God at the edges of society? Who is incubating experiments in a post-Christian lab? What are your favorite publications, magazines or websites for exploring the frontiers of the missio dei in post-Christian culture?

What are your sources? Continue reading…