After SVS 2010: Jason Clark: Consumerism, Social Imagination, & Ecclesiology

After SVS 2010 is an extended dialogue with presenters from the first annual Society of Vineyard Scholars conference, held Feb 11-13, 2010. Monday through Friday until March 26th we’ll profile an SVS presenter and dialogue with them around their paper. Click here for a brief intro and link directory of the series. Full text of papers are available to SVS members.
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Jason Clark: “Consumerism, Social Imagination, and Ecclesiology”

Abstract:
This paper suggest that a previous freedom within mission for understanding the nature of church, has given rise to a situation where it is the imagination of consumer for life, that often determines the forms of church life. Where previous forms of church became captive to the nature of market forces, new emerging forms of church are seen as further captive to this logic. This paper, traces the emergence and nature of this western individualism and agency, and it’s self creating nature, seeing identity free from commitments to any others. Examples of this are shown with:

1. Blueprint Ecclesiologies:  where idealised models of church are made, that are never realised
2. Any understanding of Church becomes pathological, where Christians form church life around ideas of what is wrong with Church, with no confidence in Scripture or mission
3. The naive belief that church can be non-instutional, when what is needed is not the absence of institutions, but an articulate institutional imagination
4. The imaginations for any of these forms of Church are often taken from consumer culture
5. What is called ‘revolution’ is often not revolution at all, but a pandering to consumer ‘authenticity’
6. And the collapse of Church into the creation of private God spaces within which people make their own isolated meaning of God, that do not lead to new christian conversion

It is suggest that the solution to this problem is to re-discover the ‘giveness’ of church life, that Church is something that is necessary to Christian identity and formation.  And that is best found in a scriptured and traditioned understanding of Church organisation, life and mission.

Interview With Jason

Q: How did you become interested in your topic?

A: Through the planting of a church, and by doing some theological reflection on the power of consumer imaginations of what life is about, and how that shapes what people give themselves to and expect the Church to support. Also through the day-to-day in pastoral life, seeing people have prayers answered and have experiences of God that seemed to lead to God becoming just one resource amongst many to get the consumer dream. In this way, you might have Oprah, but I have Jesus and he trumps Oprah to get me the life we are both trying to pursue: that is, the consumer dream. I wanted to explore what was it about consumerism that causes all of life, including the Christian life so often, to be bent around those ends. Finally, after 10 years of seeing many friends explore that dynamic by moving away from any form of Church at all, it seemed that the new post-church forms of church were pandering even more to that problem, and continuing to enable people to use Christian resources not for mission but for consumer life identities and constructions. I began to ask: Was there anything in theology and church history to help respond to this problem?

Technorati Tags: Church, Consumerism, ecclesiology, Jason Clark, Society of Vineyard Scholars, SVS

Vineyard Churches at the Crossroads

Yesterday, we all seemed to agree the Vineyard is alive and well, but in a period of stabilization that has resulted in some decline. We also agree this has been a healthy and necessary period of “house cleaning,” regrouping, and redefining in the wake of some damaging fringe elements (i.e. extreme pentecostalism) and the loss our charismatic founding leader.

This weekend I’m participating in a small round table discussion with a few other Vineyard leaders who are experimenting with a variety of alternative approaches to ecclesiology. Most of these folks have been shaped in some way by the sojourn that was the Emerging Church (though most probably wouldn’t identify with the EC). This gathering won’t be prescriptive. We’re hoping to learn from each other. I’d like to have a parallel discussion here on the blog for those who are interested.

First, one observation about why I think the Vineyard is both well positioned to reach our cultures and simultaneously at a variety of crossroads.

While the Vineyard is solidly orthodox, unlike other traditions it doesn’t have an entrenched theological heritage. Wesley was an Anglican; various Reformed traditions trace allegiance to Luther or Calvin; Baptists, I would argue, are so deeply entangled with the American exceptionalism of the era in which they were birthed that their entrenched dogma is a libertarian brand of Christ-driven patriotism (thoughts Caleb?). Even Calvary Chapel – though less so – is fairly strictly governed by the strong theological dogmas of its own charismatic founder (who is still alive, though reportedly ill). And so on.

But the Vineyard’s only strong theological heritage is the recent trajectory of “Kingdom theology” famously developed by George Ladd (via C.H. Dodd), and later expounded upon by a diverse group of theologians including Beasley-Murray (Baptist), Gordon Fee (Pentecostal), N.T. Wright (Anglican), and Scot McNight (Anabaptist) just to name a diverse few – and teased-out by highly influential thinkers like Dallas Willard and J.P. Moreland (both in the Vineyard). There is now a near consensus among the aforementioned traditions that Kingdom theology is true.

Consequently, both because of the absence of a firmly entrenched dogmatic heritage and a commitment to a theological foundation that is fairly ecumenical, there’s a tremendous amount of freedom for Vineyard churches to explore what it means to be the people of God, embodying a foretaste of the Kingdom in our local contexts while valuing and cooperating with a variety of other Christian traditions. This is one of the reasons I’m convinced the Vineyard – as Jason Smith put it yesterday – is well positioned for a “post” culture (post-Christendom, post-evangelical, post-denominational, etc.).

Having said that, I think there are a number of crossroads facing Vineyard leaders as we depart the decade of the the “Emerging sojourn.” Those include:

Missional vs. Attractional
The Emerging conversation has very much given way to the Missional conversation, and now every church in the West wants to be seen as missional. Some see this as a polarity, but others see it as a continuum. In my observation, those who define missional as “outwardly-focused” see this as a both/and continuum, whereas those who define missional as “following God into a foreign culture” see this crossroad as an either/or polarity. I’ll tip my hand and say I see this as a polarity, and think it’s more accurate to refer to this choice as “Missional vs Christendom,” where the former is necessarily marginalized, subversive, and decentralized and the latter is necessarily empowered, enthroned, and centralized.

Institutional vs Organic
How is the structure of church best expressed in your area and culture? How are you handling the pitfalls inherent in hierarchy and professionalism? Are you committed to professional leadership or are you leaning ideologically toward some kind of bi-vocational or volunteer status as a leader? A related crossroads is liturgical vs. non-liturgical (I know, everyone has a liturgy… but you know what I mean), especially in light of Todd Hunters recent comment that he see’s a “revival of religion” coming.

Pentecostal vs. Reformed vs. Anglican vs. Anabaptist
Obviously this is a huge oversimplification, but these represent some of the dominant streams of theological thinking within the Vineyard, and Kingdom theology can happily coexist with each. You could include Catholic and Orthodox as well, but I think those are more sources for perspective and inspiration than genuine options for Vineyard folks. In some ways this is the first crossroads, since a pre-disposition here will heavily determine your ecclesiology.

So, what roads you are traveling and why? Do you feel the broader Vineyard leadership, either at the national or local level, is pushing in any particular direction on these? What other crossroads do you see?

I’ll be sharing your responses with the other Vineyard folks I’m hanging with this weekend.

Technorati Tags: Anabaptist, Attractional, C.H. Dodd, Christendom, Dallas Willard, ecclesiology, George Eldon Ladd, Institutional, J.P. Moreland, John Calvin, John Wesley, Liturgy, missional, N.T. Wright, Organic, Pentecostal, Reformed, Theology, Todd Hunter, Vineyard Churches

The Arrogant Bastard Church

Ever since I wrote The Mega-Freeloader Church I’ve been thinking about a blog series that examines different cultural phenomena in the West as a way of re-imagining certain aspects of church ecclesiology. When I saw David Fitch’s post today – A Warning List For Those Who Would Join the Missional Church – I knew I needed to start my series with this:

Introducing “The Arrogant Bastard Church.”

No, I’m not talking about Mars Hill (either of them). For those of you who love beer you may know that I’m talking about some of the best beer known to man – and, happily, it’s practically made in my own backyard at fabulous place called Stone Brewery. Have a gander at the prose on the back label of a bottle of Arrogant Bastard Ale: Continue reading…

Technorati Tags: Arrogant Bastard Ale, beer, Church, David Fitch, ecclesiology, Gospel, Jesus Christ, missio dei, missional

Introducing Ikon Community

For those who want only the facts, here’s the link: ikoncommunity.com

For those who like a story, here’s the tale…

As many of you know Jenell and I moved to San Diego one year ago for the purpose of eventually starting a church. We were committed to spending the first year immersing ourselves in the local culture, making new friends and finding new career paths so we could pursue the vision of a grassroots network of Jesus-followers.

That vision started taking shape in March when we began to gather regularly with a few family and friends – all of whom were hungry for a deeper expression of Christian community, more focused on justice and mercy. Since then we’ve come together every Sunday night to enjoy each other’s company, watch our kids tear around the house, eat good food, drink cheap wine, celebrate communion, gather around scripture, and pray for one another.

Continue reading…

Technorati Tags: Church, community, discipleship, ecclesiology, Ikoncommunity.com, missio dei, mission, Sermon on the Mount, training, Vision

Marketing the Church

Marketing Magic Over Covenant Relationships

We’ve created a rather large marketing machinery and management bureaucracy in order to keep people interested in the goods and services of American consumer faith, and this machinery must be continually expanded in order to maintain momentum.

In the typical attractional church model, more and more resources are poured into facilities, programs, and products that will appeal to faith consumers – and more and more shallow consumers are attracted. At a certain point in this growth curve the deep discipleship of people in the church becomes a logistical impossibility since greater amounts of resources are required to maintain the marketing machinery necessary to continue attracting. Continue reading…

Technorati Tags: consumer church, discipleship, ecclesiology, George Barna, marketing, training, virtue