After SVS 2010: Steven Hamilton, Signs & Wonders: Wisdom & the Reign of God

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.
_____________________________________________________

Steven Hamilton, “Signs and Wonders: Wisdom and the Reign of God”

(Incidentally, Steven was snowed-in at the Baltimore airport during SVS, so he was unable to present as scheduled. I’m pleased to be able to remedy that somewhat by profiling his paper here.)

Abstract
In New Testament studies, the topic of Wisdom has gained real momentum recently, after many years of neglect. Yet as most scholarship has seemingly focused in the areas of Wisdom Christology, conventional Wisdom in James, the interaction of sapiential and apocalyptic thought in other New Testament literature, and the issues surrounding sophia in 1 Corinthians, there are many areas to which a wisdom-orientation can be brought to bear. What of Wisdom and the heart of Jesus’ message: the Reign of God?

The wisdom-orientation has a surprisingly significant impact in terms of the theology and praxis of the Kingdom of God.  This consideration will explore the frontiers of wisdom, seeking to understand how insights from the Hebrew corpus can be brought to bear in our present New Testament context of the Kingdom being both ‘now’ and ‘not yet’. While biblically-speaking, we access wisdom through an encounter with God rooted in awe and reverence, humility and worship, wisdom is not only found in the realms of religious gatherings, but all of life. The Reign of God is holistic, and as we experience the powers of the age-to-come inaugurated in Christ Jesus, the wisdom-orientation can aid the consideration of the Reign of God in our lives at our most charismatic as well as our most mundane.  In fact, the way of wisdom, much like that beheld in Job, is sought fervently, encountered with His Presence in surprising, satisfying ways, and then further shaped through interaction, devotion and contemplation.

Utilizing James Crenshaw’s point of departure –hokma as a shared paradigmatic approach to reality – we contemplate three major issues that a wisdom-orientation brings to the foreground: (1) a Trinitarian perspective vis-à-vis wisdom and how theologian-practitioners and scholars in the Vineyard movement may be uniquely positioned to explore our somewhat atrophied but burgeoning understanding of a Wisdom Pneumatology; (2) the shaping-nature of Wisdom and the Spirit connected to an underlying and holistic spiritual formation; and (3) how this wisdom-orientation dwells in the tension of ‘both/and’, bringing to the foreground our perspective and experience of the ‘now-and-not-yet’ of God’s Reign.  The Transcendent and Immanent modalities of wisdom are considered along with convergences of the sapiential, prophetic and apocalyptic in scripture, in Christ and in the Church.  Brief explorations of the further implications of a Wisdom Pneumatology on other areas like missiology, charismatology and ecclesiology are briefly considered.

Interview With Steven

Q: How did you become interested in your topic

A: I was studying Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Civilization at the Baltimore Hebrew University.  I had a really great graduate group there with lots of great explorations and exchanges.  My advisor was Barry Gitlen, one of the lead archaeologists at the Philistine Ekron dig site and an expert in Philistine material culture and the 10th century, which is the time period of the rise of the monarchy under David.  This was a time when the ‘Wisdom’ perspective and tradition emerged as fairly distinctive in the history of Israel.  This emergence of the role of the Sage and Scribe can be seen to have had a rather significant impact on history, especially on the writing and transmittal of our ancient scriptures. I think that is where my deep interest in wisdom first took hold.

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

A: I think a fuller Trinitarian aspect has been lacking in scholarship, the neglected third being Wisdom Pneumatology and I think the Vineyard – loaded with Kingdom theologian-practitioners and scholars – is primed for a major contribution to this field. I also think the wisdom-orientation recommends itself to the Vineyard as a ‘radical middle’ perspective that brings to the fore our Kingdom theology and praxis, especially the ‘both/and’ and ‘now-and-not-yet’ perspectives. I would even say that it dwells in this tension to the point of clarifying that this Kingdom tension is inherent to our place in this present aeon. Genuine Wisdom moves toward the essence of the musterion of the gospel of the Kingdom of God in Christ Jesus. I think the Vineyard has gathered a lot of wisdom from the praxis of the Kingdom of God, and applying that to the formational aspect in the theology of the Reign of God might be fairly helpful to the larger movement.  I have the feeling that this is a ‘Wisdom’ season for the Vineyard, not just in terms of leadership and culture, but in a distinctive way that Caleb Maskell outlined in his perspective at the UK and Ireland Vineyard National Leaders conference. Caleb even recommends Peter Leihart’s book Solomon Among the Postmoderns to the pastors and leaders in order to reach out to understand this emerging generation…and this book is essentially a commentary on Wisdom. Thus, I think that further explorations into the depths and riches of the biblical wisdom-orientation has much to recommend itself to the Vineyard movement.

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

A: Holistic Spiritual Formation. A balance that includes our most charismatic experiences and our most mundane.  Too often, I think many people think of their spirituality in a limited way, that the Kingdom really only breaks through in ‘prayer ministry times’ or when they can feel the Presence of God or even just on Sunday’s.  The wisdom-orientation can help us discover the transcendent and immanent aspects of the Kingdom, and also that we are ‘formed’ via these experiences, really all experiences, since spiritual formation happens as the Holy Spirit uses everything we experience to form us toward Christ; which includes our best and our worst, the felt Presence and Absence of God, our easiest and our most difficult seasons

Cross-training. I think a wisdom-orientation can help us bring issues together that have mostly been considered ‘either/or’ and bring them into a ‘both/and’ perspective. This experience just might propel us into new horizons vis-à-vis the theology and praxis of the Kingdom. For instance, a few years ago I was in Cincinnati at a small gathering and ended up in a group with Rose Madrid-Swetman talking about bringing together the charismatic and contemplative.  I have been trying to do this with a series of spiritual formation cohorts at our church, and the results have really been surprising and challenging, with real depth and new possibilities emerging for ministry, devotion, and experiencing God.

Steven will be available for further questions and dialogue in the comments.

_________________________________________________________

Steve Hamilton (www.verveandverse.blogspot.com) lives in Annapolis, Maryland and is married to Chaundra; they have three lovely girls together. A bi-vocational leader at the Central Maryland Vineyard, member of the Justice Response/VAST national leadership team with VineyardUSA and also a founding member of the Maryland Human Trafficking Task Force, he has spent almost 20 years in diverse endeavors as a civil servant with the U.S. government. He has studied bible and ancient near eastern civilization at the Baltimore Hebrew University and spiritual direction at the Sustainable Faith School of Spiritual Direction.

Technorati Tags: Christianity, Society of Vineyard Scholars, Steven Hamilton, SVS, Vineyard, Wisdom

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 we’re 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.

Technorati Tags: Andrew Jones, Charlie Wear, Ichak Adizes, Movements, Organizational Dynamics, Tony Jones, Vineyard