Toward a Missional Economy, Part 6

This is the final installment in my series on moving churches toward a practice of missional economics: Part 1: Manna in the Desert, Part 2: Manna in the Postmodern Desert, Part 3: From Wealth Building to Gift Giving, Part 4: From Scarcity to Abundance, and Part 5: From Altruism to Reciprocity.

The Modern Doctrine of the Autonomous Self
Each of these three paradigm shifts lead us to another major dilemma rooted in our commons Modern concepts of the self and the life of virtue that only the cross of Christ can address. The common thread of all the dominant economic paradigms previously mentioned is the Modern doctrine of the autonomous self.

Concerning this, theologian Thomas Oden states, “The rhetoric of unrestrained, individual freedom is a prominent earmark of the spirit of modernity.” Westerners today simply assume that well-being means being free from dependencies on others. Likewise, Christopher Kaiser observes, Continue reading…

Toward a Missional Economy, Part 1

I recently spoke on “Economy and Mission” at Verge L.A. 2009. Since starting Twoshirts.org almost two years ago, this has been a significant subject of study for me and it has direct bearing on how we shape community – something we’re currently neck deep in defining over at Ikon Community. So, over the next few days I’ll share my Verge presentation here in the hopes of stimulating some thoughtfulness about how missional churches might follow the Holy Spirit in cultivating subversive, grassroots economic communities in a desert of greed and inequality.

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I am an economist. Not by education or by training. The truth is I don’t know much about “macroeconomic rigidities” or “consensus forecasts,” but what I do know, perhaps naively, is that the heart of economics is merely the stewardship of resources, or, quite literally the “rules of the household” (Greek: oikos & nomos). Therefore, I am economist simply by living.

This means you are an economist too. It doesn’t matter if you’re poorly educated or hopelessly impoverished. Economics isn’t about what you know, or how much you have; it’s about how you handle what you have. Everyone has stuff, and everyone has a way of figuring out what to hold on to and what to let go of.

Obviously, then, God is also an economist because God has stuff – lots of stuff! So if, as I take it, “mission” means going where God goes and doing what God does (John 5:19) then a critical question for us is, “What is God the economist doing?” Or, perhaps a more helpful question for shedding our cultural prejudices would be, “What are the rules of his household?” Continue reading…