Communities of the Spirit: Untamed, Chapter 3

(During the month of April I’m blogging through Alan and Deb Hirsch’s latest book, Untamed. Previous posts: Chapter 1 | Chapter 2)

Chapter 3: The Spirit’s Edge

This chapter came at an interesting time for me, because I’m thinking through some of the very issues they broach. Is it necessary to have a sense of direct contact with God? What is our normative form of relationship with God? For the Hirsch’s part of the response to these kinds of questions would be to re-affirm the necessity of a fully Trinitarian encounter with God. Hence, this chapter commends the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives as disciples:

“One of the foundational works of the Spirit is to usher us into the true knowledge and experience of God. Said differently: if there was no Holy Spirit, there would be no possibility of encounter with God, because it is the Spirit who mediates the knowledge of God and thereby leads us into truth and righteousness (John 16:5–11). And because the Spirit brings us into deeper awareness of, and conformity to, the one true God, he keeps us from becoming toxic.”

By “true knowledge” the authors don’t mean “secret knowledge.” Rather, they mean relational knowledge, or intimacy. For example, some people know things about my wife Jenell, but I really know my wife better than anyone – and that knowledge only comes from direct contact. The author’s point in this Chapter is the same: we cannot know God without contact with the Holy Spirit, for the Spirit is the point of contact in our relationship with God.

Moreover, we cannot have contact with the Holy Spirit without letting the Spirit be wild and unpredictable. It comes with the territory. To illustrate this, the Hirsch’s open this chapter with a story from Al’s early life as a Christian when some very Pentecostal new friends prayed for him to receive the Holy Spirit, complete with tongues, cursing of the devil, and shaking. All very strange stuff to someone not accustomed to such things. Indeed, Al wanted to run out the door.

But.

Something happened. Al made life-changing, perceptible contact with God through that encounter, and although he wouldn’t recommend the particular way that happened for everyone, he can’t deny the authenticity of his encounter with the Holy Spirit or it’s transformational effects on his life. That is what he does recommend to everyone. In fact, together Alan and Deb say it’s necessary.

And that leads me to a bit of an objection: Despite their characteristically strong emphasis on the Holy Spirit and direct contact with God, from my perspective it is precisely the excessively Pentecostal streams of Christianity that prove most “toxic.” I’m thinking here of the kind of Jesus-is-your vending-machine, there’s a devil-behind-every-door triumphalistic Pentecostalism that seeks to control both people and God. I can tell you from personal experience this kind of Christianity is quite rampant.

Granted, in this Chapter (and elsewhere in the book) the Hirsch’s warn against this form of Christianity as well, calling it “spiritual engineering.” In fact, one of the things the authors rightly point out is that both Pentecostalism and Cessasionist Fundamentalism are manifestations of the same desire for power and control (some would say they share a foundationalist heritage – one biased toward experience of God, the other toward the Bible). Still, I’m not sure they do enough to develop clear distinctions between classic Pentecostalism and the kind of Holy Spirit led, transformational pneumatology they seem to have in mind. My question is: How is it that your kind of focus on the Holy Spirit will lead to reliable Christlikeness when other kinds have not?

What they do say, very clearly, is that we need both the “light” and “heat” of the revealed word and divine experience, but we must learn to relinquish control to God, particularly as God pushes His mission forward through the wild, spontaneous, uncontrollable forays of the Holy Spirit. In this sense, their distinction seems to be twofold: an embrace of a peacemaking “radical middle” position that affirms the best of both, coupled with an emphasis on relinquishing control.

(As an aside, this “radical middle” approach has been at the core of Vineyard philosophy for over 30 years. For those who are interested I would recommend Empowered Evangelicals by Rich Nathan and Ken Wilson.)

While they don’t detail a distinctive pneumatology, they do outline some characteristics they believe would be present in any community of faith that was missionally engaged with the leading of the Holy Spirit:

• Serious creativity
• Risky mission
• Communitas (Community with intense common purpose)
• Lots of little Jesuses
• Love
• Learning community
• Miracles
• Spiritual maturity
• Discernment
• Unity around Jesus
• Ecstasy and intimacy
• Transformation and liberation

Each of these are briefly expounded upon in the book, but it’s clear the authors aren’t seeking an exhaustive list. Instead, they seem to be trying to sketch out a sense that authentically Spirit-led communities will have a depth and breadth about them that is often missing from current denominational sectarian streams.

Questions for Reflection:

1. What is your experience with the Holy Spirit?
2. Have you experienced versions of Christianity that seemed to seek control of others or of God?  How did you handle that?
3. What kinds of Christians have you encountered that most resembled Christ? What did those people have in common with one another?

Technorati Tags: Alan Hirsch, Christianity, Church, Deb Hirsch, mission, missional, Untamed

After SVS 2010: Cathy Zellmer, The Divine Perichoretic Mission of Love

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.
_____________________________________________________

Cathy Zellmer: “The Divine Perichoretic Mission of Love”

Abstract
A review of the historical doctrines of the Trinity, perichoresis, and love reveals the centrality of these beliefs to our distinctively Christian understanding of God.  Current theological trends with regard to the three doctrines show that their influence holds tremendous weight in the formation of contemporary work which sees humanity injected vertically into participation in the perichoretic circle, and horizontally into sharing the passionate perichoretic life, love, and activity of God with other.  This is of particular importance if the church is to respond in God’s power to the missional call to love and justice.

My method entailed briefly showing the early theological origins and development of the Church’s thinking on the Trinity and perichoresis I move to current trends in Western Trinitarian and perichoretic thought, linking them to the Christian distinctive of ‘God is love.’  I show the centrality of love to the act of creation, Jewish belief, and Christian faith.  I finish by binding all of these streams of thought together discussing the believer’s participation in the divine life of love and relationship both vertically and horizontally.  Throughout the paper, the theologians I relied the most heavily on were Jürgen Moltmann and Joy Ann McDougall.

Interview With Cathy:

Q: How did you become interested in your topic?

A: In my very first seminary class the professor made what I consider a providential comment about perichoresis being one of the hottest topics in current theological thought.   After toying with other topics for that first research paper, I finally went with it.  As I delved into learning about the Trinity and their relationship to one another, I was just as enamored with them as Gregory of Nazianzus was when he said, “When I say God, I mean Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…No sooner do I conceive of the one than I am illumined by the splendor of the three; no sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the one.  When I think of any one of the three, I think of Him as the whole, and my eyes are filled, and the greater part of what I am thinking escapes me.”  It brought me to worship, which I consider part of my identity and heritage within the Vineyard.

Q: How do you think your paper is relevant to the Vineyard movement at large?

A: I think it’s relevant in that just as ‘God is love’ and ‘God is Trinity’ were foundational to the early church, those two truths should be intrinsic to us in the Vineyard as well.  My hope is that somehow we might again bring to our flocks a greater understanding of the mystery of the Trinity.  Absolutely everything God does is an expression of His/Their love, even things like judgment.   As well, the members of the Trinity do nothing without the involvement of the others in the Godhead.  This understanding adds depth of worship, as well as a greater understanding of God’s invitation to participate perichoretically with the Three—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—in their activity to redeem and restore the world. In addition, as we understand the great privilege of God living in us, the responsibility of housing Him in our human temples takes on a much more sacred weight(I Cor 3:16), adding greater depth, I believe, to our liturgical practices.

Q: What do you think might be the practical implications of what you’re exploring?

A: I’ll be really honest.  I don’t think there is anything in our Christian experience that perichoresis doesn’t touch on, whether we recognize it or not, as one of the earliest definitions for perichoresis is “to make room for.”  So take for example creation care.   In my estimation, the responsibility to care for creation becomes more serious as we come to understand that the Trinity made room for creation in His being, and all of creation sprang from the currents of love and life within the Godhead.^[1] Our relationship to the earth and other creatures should not be one of condescension or disregard, but of ensuring that its/their space is kept.

Or women in ministry, in particular in conservative Evangelical churches.  An understanding of that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit make room for one another in the dynamic movement of the Godhead, and that they make room for us—male and female—as they invite us into relationship, leaves me at a loss as to how some men can bolt the door to allowing women into church leadership.  That is an unfathomable position viewed from a perichoretic perspective, as within the Godhead the Three are the source of mutuality and egalitarian practice.

Or forgiveness.  It is our job to ‘make room’ for one who has offended us, or repeatedly offended us, rather than push them away.  Or—to make room for other church traditions through ‘a generous orthodoxy’ and embody the divine communion.  Or….I really think the list could go on for quite a while.  Making room is a sacred act and part of our identity as participants with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

[1] Paul Fiddes, Participating in God: A Pastoral Doctrine of the Trinity (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2000), 71-81.

Cathy will be available for further questions and dialogue in the comments

___________________________________________________________

Cathy Zellmer lives in Beaverton, Oregon, and is an MDiv student at George Fox Evangelical Seminar.  By far, the greatest majority of research that she has done to date has been on the perichoretic life of the Trinity.  Her passions are family and church life, seeing the conservative evangelical mold being broken by women in ministry, and concern for social and environmental justice.  She lives in a complex household enlivened by people and animals, including her husband, Paul, and five of their six children.  She has been part of the Vineyard for 27 years.

Technorati Tags: Cathy Zellmer, mission, Society of Vineyard Scholars, SVS, Trinity, Vineyard Community of Churches

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…

Technorati Tags: Attractional, Attractive, Isaiah, mission, missional

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…

Technorati Tags: Christendom, Culture, mission, mission dei, missional

Toward a Missional Economy, Part 5

This is part 5 in a 6 part series on moving churches toward a missional economic practice. You can check out the previous posts by clicking: Part 1: Manna in the Desert, Part 2: Manna in the Postmodern Desert, Part 3: From Wealth Building to Gift Giving, and Part 4: From Scarcity to Abundance.

From Altruism to Reciprocity
The third, and perhaps most difficult, shift is the move away from altruism and toward reciprocity. It has becomes clear in recent years that charity often exacerbates poverty by creating a one-directional patron/client relationship between those who give and those who receive. When we treat those with little money and material possessions as though they have nothing, we exclude them from their human vocation of work (i.e. “gathering” in Ex 16) and thereby debilitate their role in the community. Even worse, we create relationships of co-dependence that merely serve to perpetuate the modern hierarchies of power and control. In altruism, the patron remains powerful and the client remains weak. With altruism the implicit goal is not equality, it is relief. Continue reading…

Technorati Tags: Altruism, Bryant Myers, charity, economy, Equality, Marcel Mauss, mission, Reciprocity, twoshirts.org

Toward a Missional Economy, Part 3

In his excellent book, Walking With the Poor, Bryant Myers proclaims,

“The incarnation smashes any argument that God is only concerned for the spiritual realm and that the material is somehow evil or unworthy of the church’s attention.”

As we saw yesterday, Postmodern cultures seem to have already demolished this dualism and are experimenting deeply with economic practices that are compassionate, generous, and inclusive – thereby joining the material realm of economics with the spiritual realm of communitarian well-being. I’m convinced what we’re seeing are the fingerprints of the Missio Dei on these subcultures, especially with their embrace of an economics that bears a strong resemblance to the “rules of the house” found in passages like Exodus Chapter 16 and 2 Corinthians Chapter 8.

If this what God is doing, the missional Church will have to embrace at least three major paradigm shifts in order to join Him on that mission. Today I’ll touch on the first.

From Wealth Building to Gift Giving
The first major paradigm shift is from wealth building to gift-giving. Perhaps what is most scandalous about Exodus 16 is the total absence of individual wealth building. As hard as it is to believe, nobody was terribly rich and nobody was terribly poor. God simply provided for everyone’s needs. Every morning each family gathered their “wealth” and every night (having consumed it) they returned to relative poverty. In his beautifully meandering book, The Gift, poet and cultural scholar Lewis Hyde comments on this ancient Hebrew practice, saying,

“This is the ‘poverty’ of the gift, in which each man, by his generosity becomes ‘poor’ so that the group may be wealthy.”

The “poverty of the gift,” as Hyde puts it, is the economy of faith. Thomas Merton once said, “The essence of the Christian faith is the beggars bowl.” To put it brutally, we Christians are merely beggars. Each day we extend our empty bowl in faith and God meets our needs. Yet the economics of God’s house don’t stop there because the first rule of any gift-economy is that the gift must always move – and this is the rule in Exodus 16 as well. Gifts that are hoarded soon rot and decay like day-old Manna. So like the ancient Hebrews, as we encounter the needs of our friends, neighbors – and yes, even our enemies – we empty our bowls to enrich others, making ourselves, at the end of each day, merely beggars once again.

Here in San Diego, our friends Jason and Brooke Evans have embraced this shift by starting Make Something Day. Every year on the day-after-Thanksgiving – the largest annual shopping day in the country, also known as Black Friday – they refuse to buy anything. Instead, they make homemade gifts using stuff they already have. As friends, neighbors, and even strangers from all over the country have joined them they’ve discovered a surprising abundance of multiplied gifts in return – including creativity, gratitude, and friendship.

Questions:

1. Why do you agree (or disagree) with the Thomas Merton quote, “The essence of the Christian faith is the beggar’s bowl.”
2. What makes the shift from wealth building to gift giving so difficult? Why does is challenge our sensibilities so much?

Technorati Tags: Black Friday, Brooke Evans, Bryant Myers, Church, Economics, economy, gifts, Jason Evans, Lewis Hyde, Make Something Day, missio dei, mission, Wealth

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.

_________________________________________________

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…

Technorati Tags: 2 Corinthians, Church, Consumerism, economy, Exodus, gifts, Ikon Community, Manna, mission, Paul, twoshirts.org, Verge LA

Join Us For Thanksgiving in the Park

Over at Ikon Community Cory and Crissy Verner have planned a day-after-Thanksgiving dinner in the park in Escondido with their homeless friends. I’m really proud of these guys for subtly yet significantly different approach to helping the poor a radically by simply being their friends.

This is a great opportunity to meet some amazing people and make new friends. If you’re in the San Diego area we want to invite you do join us.

Click here to RSVP at the Ikoncommunity.com site. Continue reading…

Technorati Tags: Grape Day Park, homeless, Ikon Community, mission, poor, Thanksgiving

Church Told to Stop Feeding Hispanics

In an astonishing decision, a local zoning hearing has determined that a Phoenix church can no longer serve a weekly pancake breakfast to Hispanics.

Retired Arizona Supreme Court justice Bobb Crockeran, serving as a hearing officer, ruled Monday that feeding the Hispanics at a place of worship can be banned by city ordinance. The decision affects all Phoenix churches with underlying residential zoning.

Over the summer, city officials maintained that the church violated Phoenix zoning code by feeding the Hispanics on its property, a use that can only occur in commercial or industrial zones. City officials said the decision is effective immediately.

The church argued that it is within it’s constitutional rights to serve people’s needs on its property according to its religious beliefs. But the Crockeran disagreed:

In a 19-page opinion, Crockeran said the city can restrict where Hispanics can be fed and that zoning regulations apply to everyone equally. Additionally, he said that trumping land-use regulations is not a constitutional right.

The controversy over the weekly pancake worship service arose last spring after neighbors complained about an increase of Hispanics sleeping and loitering in alleys, incidents of burglary, aggressive panhandling, vandalism, public intoxication, prostitution and public urination. Parents of preschool students on the church campus complained that their children encountered Hispanics in school hallways.

North-central Phoenix resident Stephen Tozier said he’s pleased with Crockeran’s decision.

“This decision is more about protecting a residential area than anything else,” he said. “The nice part is the church can support the Hispanics elsewhere [...] but we can’t move the residential neighborhood.”

Peter Barres, a Phoenix neighborhood activist who spoke at last month’s zoning-adjustment hearing, said churches must be mindful that zoning rules and restrictions apply to everyone.

“It’s not a Hispanic issue, per se, it’s the fact that you need to have some control, and that’s what the zoning ordinance provides,” he said. “It’s not a problem with Hispanic people in wealthy neighborhoods. That would be a matter of prejudice. This issue would be setting churches up to avoid zoning ordinances.”

Oops, there must be something wrong with my keyboard! Everywhere it says “Hispanics” it’s supposed to say “poor and homeless.” My bad (okay, I changed the names too). The whole news story is here.

Actually, the issues are exactly the same.

These are the very same fear-based arguments that have always been made to rationalize the prejudicial dehumanization of hated groups of people, be they of a different color, a different nationality, or a different socio-economic group. Whether it was mid-century Jim Crow laws, modern immigration vitriol, anti-gay hatred, or intolerance of the poor, marginalized and hated people are always unjustly characterized as disgusting criminals and the laws that promote discrimination are always whitewashed in the benign language of “community concern.” Notice, too, how a local ordinance that actually promotes the dehumanization of an entire group of people is characterized as as protecting equality.

The dehumanization of any person never produces equality, never truly protects anyone, and is never in the best interests of a community. It’s time to stop treating certain people like a sub-species. This is what the gospel is for.

Technorati Tags: charity, Equality, Gospel, homeless, mission, News, poor, poverty

God's Missionary Incarnation

(This is part of the continuing conversation we started this week about the vision of Ikon Community)

Jesus Christ is the prototype of the Church.

Theologian Chris Wright says Jesus is the “hermeneutical coherence” through which all disciples must read the texts that “lead up to” and “on from” Christ. In our case, this means developing a prophetic imagination that is able to grab hold of Christ’s example to be a foundation for our own gathered lives as missional pilgrims in 21st century America.

Not surprisingly, examples of Christ acting as a missionary to his own culture are everywhere in the gospel narratives, but I’ve chosen a specific passage to highlight because I believe it reveals so much about Christ’s overall posture toward the people of God, the world, and the gospel itself: John 5:1-30.

In this passage Jesus comes to the pool at Bethesda and encounters a cadre of sick and disabled people. This is much like the world in general – broken and in need of redemption – and Jesus meets those needs, bringing healing to one lame man in particular, liberating him to walk (John 5:5-8). This is the powerful demonstration of the eschatological Kingdom breaking into the present; the good news has come.

That alone is an expression of God’s mission. However, we learn something of Jesus’ theology in this passage as well. When pressed by the Jewish leaders to answer for his Sabbath-breaking healing efforts, Jesus responds, saying, Continue reading…

Technorati Tags: Christopher Wright, Church, Jesus, John, mission, missional