Brethren Life and Thought

Tim Harvey, pastor of Central Church of the Brethren in Roanoke, VA recently shared some observations on small groups in church life in preparation for their congregational business meeting. In this post Tim discusses the components of vibrant small groups in the life of the congregation. The post was originally shared on Tim’s blog on the Central congregation’s website. 

Our congregation has recently experienced renewal through the ministry of the Hunger Group. Originally conceived as a short-term study group in the summer of 2011, these Central members have found renewed energy, focus, and challenge through their commitment to understand and alleviate hunger in the Roanoke Valley.  We have each benefitted from their leadership.

Small groups are not new to the history of the church. In fact, the Church of the Brethren began as a small group, as eight persons gathered for Bible Study, prayer and baptism in 1708.  Many Christians throughout the years have found a deepened sense of faith and commitment through the shared life of a small group.

In order to be effective, a small group needs to find togetherness in the following areas:  someone to bring the group together; a commitment to stay together; a focus which guides theirstudy together; opportunities to do mission together; chances to get together; and times to pray together.

The first two categories are the minimum commitment for a small group to exist in any meaningful way; without these, the group is significantly flawed and will struggle to accomplish effective ministry.

Leadership is what brings the group together.  Leadership takes a number of forms:  a convener; a study leader; a fellowship coordinator; a mission coordinator, just to name a few.  In fact, an effective small group will divide up these tasks among the group members, thus sharing in the overall group planning.

A commitment to stay together is also critical.  This commitment will vary from group to group, depending on the purpose.  A prayer group or life-stage group may stay together indefinitely; a study group (like we offer in the summer) or a focus group (like our membership class) will meet for a short period of time, or until a particular task is complete.  Whatever the case may be with each group, commitment must be clearly stated and agreed upon:  how often the group meets, how long the group plans to exist, and what members do to prepare for group meetings are key questions.

The next four categories will vary from group to group, depending on the purpose of the group.  They need not exist in equal proportion, but will be present in some form:

A small group should study together.  This will likely be what brought the group together in the first place; whether the group is a Sunday School class or a mission group, a time of study will open our minds to greater understanding of God’s activity in our lives and in the world around us.

A small group should do mission together.  Whatever the purpose of the group, there should be some project that takes the group outside of itself into the community.  When we put mission first in our lives, the Spirit opens up some interesting doors.

A small group should get together for fellowship.  Whatever the main purpose of the group (mission, study, prayer, etc.), the overall group experience will be enhanced by spending time together doing other things.  Deep relationships centered around fellowship can powerfully impact the group’s commitment.

Finally, a small group should pray together, encouraging one another in their shared spiritual growth.  Through prayer and discussion, group members can help one another grow in deeper faith and commitment.

As our congregation moves forward and seeks continued renewal and growth, small groups should be at the forefront of our thinking.  Approaching our Spring Council Meeting, I see several implications of small group thinking for our congregation.

First, the days of measuring church commitment by a willingness to serve on a committee are over.  Instead, small groups with a strong emphasis on mission and spiritual growth must be the priority of our congregation.

Second, consider the small group(s) (Sunday School classes) you are in.  How are the above six characteristics on display in that group?  Is there a clear investment in shared leadership?  Have each of the members in the group expressed their own commitment to the group?  In what proportion are the qualities of study, mission, fellowship, and prayer present?   If these qualities are there, then thanks be to God!  If they are not, is it time for some soul-searching among group members?  Could it be that the group has simply outlived its original purpose?  Is it time for the group to be either renewed or disbanded so members can reform into a new group?

Tim Harvey is pastor of Central Church of the Brethren in downtown Roanoke, VA. He and the congregation work hard at issues of renewal and revitalization, both in the congregation and in the downtown community. Issues of spiritual and literal hunger are recurring themes in their mission and ministry. And yes, he rides a unicycle!

By Dana Cassell

Rachel Held Evans’ new book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood is getting a bunch of press, which I’m glad about. There’s a lot of predictable internet bickering going on, a lot of posturing and arguing and name-calling, some pointed and snarky responses and some responses full of grace. Some of the evangelical crowd is yelling about the book being a “mockery” of the Bible. Even some more progressive, neo-evangelicals and emerging Anabaptists are pretty inhospitable to the idea – though I’m not convinced they’ve actually read the book OR much of Rachel’s blog.

Honestly, I find most of that conversation silly. I don’t come from those circles where women in leadership is still an all-consuming and contentious subject. I’m not really invested in arguments about women’s roles or what biblical womanhood may or may not be. I like the book, and I like Rachel, not because she’s a woman or because she’s writing about women but because a) she’s funny and b) the way she incorporates an online community into her writing is fascinating and phenomenal.

When I say funny, I mean: laugh-out-loud, guffawing in the middle of the studiously quiet Starbucks kind of funny. Rachel is self-effacing in ways that I can identify with, she references everything from Anne of Green Gables to Arrested Development, and her ability to play off the mad-dash contemporary pop culture against the molasses pace of down-home Dayton, Tennessee is delightful. A scene near the beginning of the book in which Rachel attempts to purchase cipollini onions in an East Tennessee Wal-Mart nearly knocked me off my chair.

But what really intrigues me is the way that Rachel has been able to create space on the internet for real, sustained, honest conversation among people of widely varying theological stripes…and then somehow incorporate that communal discussion so gracefully into her in-print writing.

First: the blog. Rachel’s blog is built for conversation. I’ve been involved in several online blog-based initiatives meant to spark discussion, and none have been uber-successful. Whether we skewed the pieces too theological or aimed them at a too narrow audience, readership was high but participation was very, very low. I think people are often hesitant to participate online because of the dangers of being misinterpreted and because they’re wary that any conversation on the internet will devolve into name-calling and triviality. Surely, the prevalence of Facebook and Twitter debate has not eased anyone’s mind on that front.

But Rachel somehow creates and nurtures space that is meant to be about interaction, and healthy, productive interaction at that. The comment sections are long and encouraging – people actually engage the substance of one another’s comments. There’s very little snarking back and forth at one another.

The content itself is carefully planned and directed by readers. She regularly hosts guest writers in an “Ask A…” feature, where readers submit suggestions for the guests as well as their particular questions. The space has hosted funeral directors, transgendered Christians, Mennonites, messianic Jews, feminists, pagans, Pentecostals, and nuns, to name a few. Readers ask honest questions, and writers answer with openness and grace. Real conversation!

This sense of graceful community comes through in the book. Rachel writes about sharing the experience of her writing project with blog readers. She tweets for help in the kitchen, asks her readers about tips for baking challah, and surveys the blogosphere for perspective on motherhood. It is clear, reading the book, that while the hard work of writing (and experimenting: Rachel is definitely the one who slept in a tent during her period, abstained from cutting her hair for a year, and called her husband “master” for a month.) were done by one person, the authorship of this book is shared.

I’m not sure exactly what that means yet, literarily or theologically. But I like where it’s headed. I like that we can use technology to open space for communal conversation and discernment. I like that a book can be written together: not by committee, but by community. I like that this book and this blog are places where multiple voices not only get heard, but are engaged, regularly. I like that when I tweeted about guffawing while reading, Rachel saw it immediately and re-tweeted so that my experience of reading alone in a coffee shop was transformed into a shared celebration. I like that, as we Brethren say, discernment comes through scripture-read-in-community, and this book is an example of both creation and experience done just that way.

And in some strange, meta-level twist of the Spirit’s movement, I think that’s exactly the point that Rachel was trying to make: no work of art is pure and singular. Not even the Bible, revered as it may be, is a monolithic monotone dictation from God. It is a collection, a conversation, a squawking cacophony of voices that don’t really make sense until we agree to create some space for them to speak to one another in grace. Maybe that’s what the canon is, maybe that’s what the church is, maybe that’s what we are to be about. Thanks to Rachel for clearing away some of the clutter and getting the discussion started. Eshet chayil! Woman of valor!

Dana Cassell serves as Minister for Youth Formation at the Manassas Church of the Brethren in Manassas, Virginia, as well as Staff for Ministry Formation in the Church of the Brethren Office of Ministry. She blogs at Authenticity.

By Randall Westfall

If I were to ask you to make a list of things that you loved to do as a child, what would be on your list? For me that list includes (but is not limited to): running barefoot, building forts, catching things, building campfires, climbing, getting dirty, telling stories, imitating animals, hiding, exploring, and a ton of other pastimes that would take up more time than I have been allotted here.

If you were to ask a child today what their favorite activities are, you’d likely get a different list of activities. Though overlap may occur, I suspect that most would involve a screen or an outlet as many have replaced formative experiences outdoors with informative experiences indoors. It’s even changing our vernacular as dictionaries are doing away with words like heron, dandelion, and blackberry in favor of iPod, broadband, and ironically Blackberry.¹

In his book Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv coined the term nature-deficit disorder (NDD) to illustrate the significant psychological, physical, and cognitive costs that alienation from nature has on children today.² NDD isn’t an actual clinical disorder as much as it gives voice to what many of us were already thinking by addressing our intuitive understanding that nature is not only good for our children but essential to their healthy development.

Children today spend more than 90 percent of their time indoors and less than 25 minutes a week outdoors.³ A trend that is leading to epidemics in childhood obesity, depression, ADHD, Asperger’s and more.⁴ Why is this happening? Studies are showing that there are: a) more demands on children’s time, b) parental fears of “stranger danger,” c) more sedentary lifestyles, d) urbanization of America and e) an increased use in electronic media (up to 44 hours a week).⁵ These “digital natives” are experiencing the world in a radically different way than their ancestors did and it has consequences on their spiritual development.

Throughout history, our ancestors encountered God primarily through two means: nature and storytelling. Nature was experienced through the senses (body) and the heart, and stories informed the intellect (mind) and the heart. Over time, our stories evolved from oral narratives, to being captured in written form. In the past 25 years, as technology has expanded its reach and outdoor experience has degenerated, we find ourselves processing our experiences more through our mind and less through our body. In fact, we are witnessing the beginnings of what some scientists are calling a “transhuman” era⁶ where we are no longer multi-sensory beings; rather we become one-dimensional as our experiences are increasingly filtered through some type of technological medium.

This is all a part of NDD, and it is affecting our spiritual landscape. In ages past, a child’s spiritual life was assumed, largely in part because of the way they interacted with the natural world around them. As we become less engaged with the outdoors, we can no longer make assumptions regarding spiritual development. Children are trading in outdoor experiences for a virtual house arrest in which they live through external, digital devices. Being outdoors has shaped who we are for centuries, yet in the span of a generation; children who are “nature-smart” are becoming an endangered species.

Could it be that we are actually doing more harm than good living in a “Take only pictures; leave only footprints” culture, as our efforts to protect and preserve nature are also creating barriers to interacting with it. When it comes to nature, we have adopted a “museum” approach whereby children are taught to look but don’t touch. Other adages like stay on the trail, don’t wander, may be inadvertently projecting our fears that when interacting with nature someone will get hurt, be it either human or the landscape. If you can’t interact with something, it isn’t long before you lose interest. And if enough time passes, we dishonor God by basically declaring that “what you have made no longer interests me.” We’re encouraging children to “play it safe” in controlled environments, hyper-stimulated by electronic media. If they aren’t hyper-stimulated, they either become anxious or disengage. NDD keeps our appreciation for nature so long as we don’t interact with it. Imagine the same being said for our faith? I appreciate God, but I don’t interact with God. What do spiritual disciplines look like to that person?

The paradox of faith is that the God who dwells on the inside often must be encountered outside. When we lose the appeal to explore outer landscapes, then what metaphors will navigate the journey for our inner landscape? Faith has become inside out and it isn’t until we realize our connection with nature; then the Mystery at work in the depths of our souls and the Mystery in the natural world are parts of the same reality.⁷  Author John Lionberger believes that “Being outdoors has the power to join two extreme states of awareness, consciousness and acuity, which lead to peak experiences the recipient finds deeply spiritual.⁸ In my time in outdoor ministry, I’ve observed that children who have a connection with nature are more aware of their relationship with God than those who spend little or no time outdoors.

This is not about doing away with our iStuff, rather we must learn to find a balance between the digital and the natural. What if for every text or email sent, we spent those moments sitting and listening for what the robins and towhees were saying to us? Or instead of recognizing the thousands of corporate logos we see on commercials, we take the time and familiarize ourselves with the wood sorrel, plantain, and nettle in our own backyard? Or every video game spent trying to get to the next level; we spent an equal amount of time following a set of raccoon tracks to discover hidden levels of its life?

How will we prevent NDD from being passed on to future generations? It’s time for us to start embodying those childhood passions we listed above, as spiritual disciplines to feed the fire of faith just as we do with devotions, bible study, prayer and worship. Only then can we become fully awakened, fully alive, and experience the abundant life that Jesus wants us to step into. Our eyes, ears, noses, taste buds, bodies, hearts, and even brains were created in such a way that it is vital for us to engage creation, in doing so we always encounter the Creator.

Randall Westfall is the director at Camp Brethren Heights and founder of Ancient Paths Outdoor School in west-central Michigan.He is a graduate of Wilderness Awareness School near Seattle, with certifications in Naturalist Studies, Wildlife Tracking, Edible/Medicinal Plant Studies, Bird Language, Art of Mentoring and Wilderness Survival. He spent just as much time immersed in nature as he did sitting at his computer writing this article.

1. Morris, Charles. National Catholic Reporter. 18 November 2011.  [↩]
2. Richard Louv. Last Child in the Woods. Chapel Hill: Algonquin, 2005. [↩]
3. Play Again. Dir. Tonje Hessen Schei. 2010. [↩]
4. Ibid. [↩]
5. Ibid. [↩]
6. Richard Louv. The Nature Principle. Chapel Hill: Algonquin, 2011. [↩]
7. Robert M. Hamma. Earth’s Echo. Notre Dame: Sorin Books, 2002. [↩]
8. John Lionberger. Renewal in the Wilderness. Woodstock: Skylight Paths, 2007. [↩]

[Part 3 of a three-part series on James K.A. Smith's Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation.¹ Part 1 is here and part 2 is here.]

by Scott Holland

I’m writing my rather tardy contribution to the Brethren Life and Thought Blog on Easter weekend, a time when many Christians celebrate the bodily life and resurrection of Jesus. We are reminded at Easter that unlike the Greek philosopher Socrates, who faced his sentence of capital punishment with a calm, welcome acceptance as the cup of poison hemlock was placed in front of him, Jesus, the Jewish rabbi, resisted his death with the anguished plea, “Father, if it is possible remove this cup from me.” For Socrates, the body was the mere prison of the soul. For Rabbi Jesus, the body and the book and the beloved world were imagined as united in God and thus believed to be blessed by God.

James Smith’s marvelous book, Desiring the Kingdom, offers his readers a well integrated philosophy of God, world, self and others. As a philosopher schooled in both classical theologies and Continental philosophies, Smith offers us a theology of culture in which the heart, head and hand cannot be pried apart in naming ourselves and rendering God’s name in history. This theology of culture makes four important moves: First, it offers an anthropology of humans as embodied actors rather than thinking, theorizing, talking heads. It prioritizes practices rather than ideas or doctrines. It looks at these cultural practices through the lens of worship, liturgy and ritual. Finally, it offers a culturally engaged rhetoric and practice of antithesis without being against culture.

Working out of the best of the Reformed tradition, Smith critiques the rationalism so dominant in the academy and public life by offering a more holistic understanding of the human person as “a desiring, imaginative animal.” However, Smith’s project doesn’t merely replace the thinking head of rationalism with the believing body of the Christian. Indeed, in James Smith’s theological vision, the human is more than a reasoning, believing, narratological animal; the human being is also a longing, loving actor in a blessed, broken world. In this vision, we are offered a robust understanding of the narrative and performative constitution of the self.

Professor Smith trained at Villanova University, a school where classical Augustinian Christianity dances with postmodern, phenomenological and Continental philosophy. Desiring the Kingdom brings these rich intellectual and spiritual traditions into both implicit and explicit conversation with the Reformed view of theology and education. Much like Smith, I trained at a school known for blending a Catholic analogical imagination with Continental phenomenology: Duquesne University. For a window into how our theologies nicely intersect see my How Do Stories Save Us?.²

Brian Gumm’s blog suggests that James Smith’s work might resonate with my “The Pietist as Strong Poet.” Indeed it does. In that piece I accent the Pietist’s epistemology of the heart and theopoetics of desire as a corrective to received theological and philosophical orthodoxies. With James Smith’s satisfying book open on my desk let me reflect briefly on the “The Anabaptist’s Will, the Pietist’s Heart and the Lover’s Gaze.”

Continue reading

1. Smith, James K.A. Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2009. [↩]
2. Holland, Scott. How Do Stories Save Us?: An Essay on the Question With the Theological Hermeneutics of David Tracy in View. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans and Louvain: Peeters, 2006. [↩]

[Part 1 of a three-part series on James K.A. Smith's Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation.¹ Part 2 is here and part 3 is here.]

by Joshua Brockway

James K. A. Smith has written an accessible and insightful discussion of practices and the Christian faith. Smith turns to consider practices and liturgies as foundational for the ways we act in the world as Christians thus challenging worldview understandings of Christian education and formation,. Rather than discuss these practices in ideological terms Smith defines these liturgical practices as “a ‘hearts and minds’ strategy, a pedagogy that trains us as disciples precisely by putting our bodies through a regimen of repeated practices that get hold of our heart and ‘aim’ our love toward the kingdom of God.”² Yet, Smith is clear that liturgies are not just proprietary to the Church. All cultures have within them liturgical practices which aim a person’s desires towards some other ultimate end end.

Brethren, however, have not been warm to the language of liturgy. Following many other Radical Reformation traditions, we have come to define our worship as “Free Church” and our theology as asacramental. These moves are rightly understood as reactions to the clericalism of 16^th and 17^th century Europe. Yet, the effect has been that we are not attentive to the ways rituals and liturgies shape our actions. Smith’s work, on the other hand, makes very clear that the question is better framed not by a rejection of liturgy, but by asking which liturgy defines us.

Continue reading

1. Smith, James K.A. Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2009. [↩]
2. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, 33 [↩]

Now that the series from the Young Adult Forum is complete, here is what’s up next.

This week we will be starting a seriers of reflection/responses to Desiring the Kingdom by James K. A. Smith.  Smith is Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI. He has written a number of books and weighed in on topics such as hermeneutics, Radical Orthodoxy, Post-Modernism, and Calvinism.

So why engage Desiring the Kingdom? Simply stated, too many theologians, philosophers, and psychologists have shown that what we think has little to do with how we live. We might know a lot of things, or even for that matter believe, certain things, but those beliefs are often contradicted by our actions in the world. This is especially true in the ways Christians have approached education. Smith comments on this reality near the end of the book:

To be blunt, our Christian colleges and universities generate an army of alumni who look pretty much like all the rest of their suburban neighbors, except that our graduates drive their SUVs, inhabit their executive homes, and pursue the frenetic life of the middle class and the corporate ladder ‘from a Christian perspective.’¹

Our next three posts then will engage Smith’s insightful work. These posts will come from Joshua Brockway- director, spiritual life and discipleship for the Church of the Brethren; Brian Gumm- licensed minister in the Church of the Brethren and graduate student at Eastern Mennonite University’s Seminary and Center for Justice & Peacebuilding; and Scott Holland Professor of Theology and Culture and Director of Peace Studies and Cross-Cultural Studies for Bethany Theological Seminary.

1. James K. A. Smith Desiring the Kingdom, 219 [↩]

In 2008 the Church of the Brethren hosted a gathering of Young Adults as part of the continuing conversations about ministerial leadership. The goal of the gathering was to discuss the emerging realities for the church as the denomination discerned the needs for a new system of calling ministers. Each of the sessions began with prepared presentations and a series of questions for those gathered to discuss around their tables. After the event, a Minute was prepared from the conversations. Brethren Life and Thought will publish a number of the presentations here over the course of several weeks.

 

The following presentation was prepared and offered by Anna Lisa Gross.

Narrative and identity

In postmodernity, narrative and identity are key. Narrative is the method of truth-seeking, meaning-making – and just like so many movements that we’re experiencing, this is not new, as the Old Testament and parables show. So, narrative is the method of meaning-making. Identity is the way of moving through the world, the foundation for our living. No one can speak with authority outside their own social location (class, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, language, ability, age, education, et cetera), and identity is increasingly about social location more than any one specific role that we play in our lives. I can’t speak with authority on being a mother, or having disabilities, or being a gay man because they are outside my social location. This is one of many reasons that leadership needs to be representative of the full spectrum of humanity, so we can hear the real narratives of real people, rooted in their own identities, especially as the Church of the Brethren and the culture are increasingly asking for multicultural conversation. But first, we need to talk and reflect deeply about our own ethnic identities before we can hope to build strong multiethnic relationships and we need to talk and reflect deeply about our own sexuality before we can make proclamations about someone else’s, et cetera.

Integration and boundaries

How many of you have an email address?

• How many of you have a single email address that you use for work, for family, for school friends, for community involvement?
• How many of you have a separate address for many of these aspects of your lives?
• How many of you use Gmail, or another program that pulls all of your email accounts into one inbox?

Technology allows for and encourages integrated lives. We are available 24/7, as we’ve already talked about, to our work, our family, our friends, our community involvement, and each of these aspects of our lives can show up when we’re trying to focus on another. Technology will only increasingly affect culture in this way. Is that good or bad? Who knows? Perhaps we won’t know until we’re able to look back on this time. For now, what feels right for you?

How can the church, especially congregations, support leaders whose lives are integrated in these ways? We’ve moved from a model of leadership that had few boundaries, to one obsessed with boundaries, to this time of integration. Take for example, Ed. Ed IS a pastor, he claims this as his identity, his fundamental way of interacting with the world – no boundaries between work identity and home identity, because work is everything. Or, Sue. Sue is a minster, Sue is a friend, a daughter, a writer, etc. She has clear boundaries between each role, and seeks self-care (sometimes by switching to a different role that is more comfortable). Or, Alex. Alex is Alex. Alex ministers, is married, studies, serves on boards, but Alex is Alex.

I am part of this emerging model, and because that is my perspective, it’s easy to prefer it. But certainly there are strengths and weaknesses of each model. And certainly these movements are not determined only by generation: personality and culture matter, too.

Ed’s model of no boundaries could invite integrity – he’s a pastor everywhere he goes, so he probably wants people to see him fulfilling that role with integrity – and we know we have high standards for pastors’ morality. But many leaders in this model desperately need time to let down their guard and live into their flaws. In fact, the more we try to show a public, flawless face, the stronger our faults can be in our lives. For many pastors and other leaders, this has meant that a secret life emerges, where those with less power – often their children or spouse or others, suffer.

Sue’s model of clear divisions between roles could invite secrets – a part of her home life that she doesn’t share with her workplace, for example. And I’m not talking here about specifics – I don’t mean to suggest that anyone give all the details of their sex lives to their congregation, but that ministers be comfortable acknowledging that they’re even dating – and I know pastors who will NOT share this information with their churches. But the element of self-care can allow for healthier home life, work life, and greater longevity in all of these roles. Intentionally choosing a place in life to be a flawed person can mean that faults are lived into, rather than taking on a life of their own.

In Alex’s emerging model, all of who we are is present in all of what we do. In a counseling session, Sue may find that a parishioner’s struggle with her mother is triggering Sue’s own painful relationship with her mother, but because she is in “pastor” role, she shuts that door to focus on the parishioner. But Alex might think, “wow, I feel strong emotions rising that are about my own relationship with my mother, not about this woman’s story. What does this emotion teach me, and what are the differences between our stories that I need to remain aware of?”

Our struggles, failures, and doubts must be able to enter our lives in all aspects, including our leadership in the church. Have you heard these things during joys and concerns time?

•  I’m drowning in credit card debt.
• I’m ashamed of my sexual desires.
• I can’t pray.

How can leaders model this vulnerability? Are there things we do NOT want ministers to be vulnerable and honest about? Should any of these things preclude someone from church leadership? I don’t think so – in fact, I think leaders who can hold these struggles in tension with their faith and commitment are particularly strong. Leaders in the church should not be morally perfect people – even if we could agree on what that would mean, it’s impossible. Leaders in the church should be as imperfect as anyone else, but willing to share vulnerably their imperfections. The very stories of their struggles – and their successes over struggles – are valuable testimonials.

And leadership is more than just airtime – we must lead with listening, and lead even when no one can see what we’re doing. How do we honor the vulnerability of others? How do we facilitate communities that honor each others’ vulnerability?

I said earlier that, beginning in our own narratives and identities, we need to talk deeply about our own sexualities, for example, before we make proclamations about other’s sexualities. This summer, Annual Conference passed revisions to the Ministerial Ethics Paper that specified that ministers should not have sex outside of marriage. I know many of you here, and I know that most of you, including myself, have had sex before and/or outside of marriage. So how can we pass a paper saying that ministers should not have sex before marriage, without acknowledging how many of us have and exploring why?

Those of us who are now married may be able to more easily vote for a paper with this language. Even if we did have sex before marriage, or even if we’re having sex outside of our current marriage, we’re much safer in the eyes of the church. But married people passing such a ruling has significant implications for single people, and people in committed relationships not generally accepted by the church (most obvious of which are same-sex relationships).

So this brings up privilege. It is just a fact that some identities give us more privilege than others. When we speak out of our privileged identities, for example, when I speak as a white person, I need to be particularly intentional about language and power. And I believe that Matt used his own male privilege very well earlier, pointing out to other men that the talking space was being dominated by men. Matt, as a man, can do this without eliciting the backlash that a woman might – you know, being called a feminist, or something. Matt can be called a feminist without it threatening his social influence.

Back to Alex’s model – living integrated lives means that self-care takes a very different form. We don’t necessarily find healing by switching roles, because our core self is involved in all aspects of our lives, and our core self is what needs rejuvenation. So we don’t shut the door on work to relax. Instead, we try to make work better. We don’t settle for poorly facilitated meetings, knowing we can go home, turn on the TV and forget about it – we strive for better facilitation. We don’t lose ourselves in an 80-hour work week to avoid the problems we’re having with our spouse – we know the problems we have at home affect who we are at work, and must be addressed directly. Similarly, we’re resisting the current over-mobility of our culture – moving around the world for school and jobs. Instead we’re seeking a deep relationship with a specific location, and technology can aid us in this. Of course, telecommuting and similar technology is still not available to all – we can’t assume it’s a common ground.

This model really is emerging – many of us in this room are still in Sue’s model, some, perhaps, in Ed’s, perhaps a combination of two or three. But I believe that most people 20 and younger are living primarily in Alex’s model. Facebook can be an example, here, as well. There is serious concern about what of our personal lives might end up on Facebook and affect our current or future employment. But the teenagers I know with Facebook accounts are not concerned about a picture of them with a beer affecting their future work opportunities. This may be youthful ignorance or short-sightedness. It may be a desire for complete authenticity. It surely is a combination of both. And this integration will only increase as the technology that fuels it advances, and as people relish their integrated lives.

What do you want as a leader in the church? To keep parts of your life fully private? To live a life that can’t be criticized? To live in a community that sees all of who you are, accepts you fully, and joins you on an authentic journey toward wholeness?

What narrative do you tell with authority that the world needs to hear?

How is your life boundaried? How is your life integrated?

In 2008 the Church of the Brethren hosted a gathering of Young Adults as part of the continuing conversations about ministerial leadership. The goal of the gathering was to discuss the emerging realities for the church as the denomination discerned the needs for a new system of calling ministers. Each of the sessions began with prepared presentations and a series of questions for those gathered to discuss around their tables. After the event, a Minute was prepared from the conversations. Brethren Life and Thought will publish a number of the presentations here over the course of several weeks.

The following presentation was prepared and offered by Matthew E. McKimmy.

How do we even begin a conversation on a topic as broad as culture? There are so many angles from which you might approach it, and it can mean so many different things. Therefore, I think that my first order of business should be to state what aspect of culture it is I intend to address.

Like any modern young adult looking for a quick and general overview of a topic, I headed to Wikipedia to see what it had to say about how we might define culture. Some possibilities I was presented: that culture is a general process of intellectual, spiritual, and aesthetic development; OR a particular way of life, whether of a people, period, or a group; OR the works and practices of intellectual and especially artistic activity. The article then goes on to muddy things even further by saying culture can also be a mixture of these three.

So examples of culture can be anything from the particular, individual social constructions we use to relate with one another to the broad patterns and structures of human activity that define the entirety of our lives. As I speak to you today, it is the later, more “macro” aspect of culture I plan to address: the broad social constructions we operate within on a daily basis.

There is a definite advantage to being the first person to present at an event like this, where our topics intentionally begin broadly and then circle closer and closer to a more defined focus. The way I see it, I get to set the ball rolling by giving the pot a good stir, priming the pump, and bringing up some of the big questions that our subsequent topics and conversations must be mindful of.

Despite what some folks may say, or hope, or even preach, culture is inescapable. We cannot fully remove ourselves from culture, we can only seek to experience it differently.

The phrase “in the world but not of the world” gets tossed around a lot when the subject of culture comes up. I think it’s a good description of the inescapable nature of culture. We cannot help but be in the world, taking part in culture, but we must also recognize how that affects us. We are called to be aware of culture and avoid being blindly shaped by it, as best we can.

So who am I to talk about culture? Who am I to be here and a part of this presentation at all? This is an important question for all of us any time we attempt to discuss culture, for our social locations greatly impact our perceptions, opinions, and understandings.

A bit of background; some transparency about where I’m coming from as I speak on culture: I’m a white, twenty-something male from a lower-middle class background. I’ve spent over a third of my life as a full-time college student, and now, after finishing my M.Div. at Bethany in May 2008, I’ve been a full-time pastor since June 2008. Until relocating to attend seminary my predominant life experience was semi-rural and medium-sized-city life in Southwest Virginia. Now I call the small city of Richmond, Indiana home.

None of these places are the sort you might consider to be at the cutting edge of culture. If anything you might say they’re more likely behind the curve when it comes to the big-picture cultural shifts of the 21^st century.

In many ways, our culture today is defined by such shifts. We are in a liminal time, a time in-between, in transition from what has been to what we are moving towards. While there are people who may refute the very existence of some of the particular trends and movements that I’m about to touch on, few can deny that there are massive cultural shifts underway in the world today.

The modern era has been shaped by a continual push for progress in all areas of human life, rooted in the ideals of the enlightenment. But somewhere in the middle of the 20^th century we began to realize we might not be capable of the constant progress we hoped for. In a milieu of world wars, genocides, and other local and global atrocities the concept of post-modernity began to emerge. In our current age of seemingly endless information and advanced communications technology, post-modernity continues to gain traction. Absolute truths are looked upon with utmost skepticism. Traditional understandings of every realm of human experience are openly questioned.

Yet we are not a fully post-modern culture. We may be moving in that direction, but we have not yet arrived. Who knows, we may never fully arrive! It’s not an either-or proposition, whether we experience life and culture as modern or post-modern. Rather it is always an awkward mix of the two, which inevitably causes conflict and confusion along the way.

Similarly, our culture is shifting away from when Christianity has greatly influenced and shaped the predominant worldview. We’re moving into a time of post-Christendom where the influence of the church is greatly diminishing. Many people are questioning the relevance of the institutional church, wondering what role it will play in their lives and in culture in general. Not only intellectuals, scholars, and so on, but everyday folks in small cities and towns like Richmond, Indiana. This is especially true amongst us young adults. There are very few churches in the western world where the proportion of young adults is reflective of the number of young adults in the general population.

Some writers and thinkers have even gone so far as to say that rather than just moving into a period of post-Christendom, we are instead moving into a post-Christian or even post-religious era. This is less a statement about our culture’s overall desire to connect with the transcendent as it is a critique on the institutional nature of the Christian Church. I’m mindful of books like Dan Kimball’s They Like Jesus But Not the Church and Spencer Burke’s Heretic’s Guide to Eternity that speak to many people’s desire to follow the ways and teachings of Jesus but also reflect a cultural backlash against how these are commonly put into practice within the church.

As we enter into conversations on the Church and Leadership, this cultural trend towards re-thinking the role and shape of the church as an institution cannot be ignored.

Another place this trend is reflected is in the shift towards post-denominationalism. Even for me, someone who has been brought up in the Church of the Brethren and is deeply committed to it, I can see where this is coming from. For decades now most denominations have been in decline. The churches where the most growth is now taking place tend to be non-denominational, or at most loosely associated with various evangelical or Pentecostal movements.

Whereas denominational identity once more clearly defined the beliefs and practices of a congregation or individual, now at most it might give an idea of preferred worship style and general theological leanings, and often not even that. These days it’s more common to find greater differences within denominations than between them. For example I know Brethren who feel a closer spiritual kinship with Methodists, Quakers, Baptists, or Episcopals than with other Brethren, despite still holding firmly to their identity of being Brethren.

If there is one constant in our culture it is that we are constantly in a state of flux, changing between what was and what is still emerging. Our constant is change, and it seems to be taking place at an increasingly rapid rate.

Deep change is afoot within culture, society, and in turn the church. Change that we haven’t experienced in centuries. Phyllis Tickle and others have likened this time we live in to other so-called “great” periods in the history of the western world, such as the Great Schism or the Reformation. If you haven’t already read her latest book The Great Emergence, I highly recommend it.

As I look at the tremendous cultural changes that have taken place in the lives of people my grandparents age, just a couple generations older than me, it’s difficult for me to imagine that the social and cultural changes I will likely face in my lifetime will be exponentially greater.

One question comes to my mind in the midst of all this cultural and social change: why are we so determined to define ourselves in terms of what we have been and are no longer, post-this or post-that?

Instead, why can’t we be proactive, recognizing where God is at work in our time, our culture, claim that for what it is, and seek to faithfully take part? Rather than lamenting change and trying to put the brakes on it, why not find it an opportunity for transformation. Our recent Annual Conference theme comes to mind: “The old is gone, the new has come, all this is from God!” Is it possible for us to claim aspects of these cultural changes as God at work in our lives?

I guess I should admit I’m very much a practical theologian. After all, what good is thinking and talking about what is going on in our culture and society and where God fits in if we as people of faith aren’t willing to act accordingly? Yes the world and our culture are changing, and so must we!

I challenge us all, in our conversations both here and beyond, to not simply lament what is no longer and how we’ve become so disconnected from culture, but to instead speak of how we can and are rising to these challenges we face.

Yes, we live in a time where spirituality is of much greater societal interest than traditional, institutional church participation. We’ve probably all talked to folks who are “spiritual but not religious.” How do we help ourselves and others to recognize God’s movement in that desire for connection with the Spirit, and to respond?

Our culture is moving in ways that value relationship and authenticity more than hierarchy and expertise. Servant leadership and flat, shared administrative structures have been gaining traction in the world outside the church for a while now. With tremendous repositories of resources available at people’s fingertips, via the internet and other means, learned expertise isn’t as crucial to gathering raw information we as it once was. How can we seek to be more relational and authentic in ways that reflect Christ to our culture?

As Christianity finds itself farther on the margins of mainstream society how can we adopt a sense of mission that recognizes our own cities and towns to be just as viable mission fields as locations on other continents? How can we cultivate a missional attitude that reflects the mission of Jesus: healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and bringing good news to the marginalized and oppressed people that we live among?

We all know our denomination is struggling with its identity. So are many others. Is there a way for us to reclaim a distinctive Brethren identity in a way that is welcoming of our internal diversity and also relevant to a changing culture? How can we claim our history of ecumenism and continue to nurture it in radical new ways as what it means to be a denomination continues to change?

Brothers and sisters, these are just some of the challenges, or rather opportunities, that our current culture affords. This is the context in which all our conversations during this forum are taking place. It is the context in which our lives and ministries as individuals and as the church take place. We cannot allow our visions to become too narrow because we choose not to see what is happening around us, for our voices to become constrained by the fear of speaking the truth to power, for questions to go unasked because we know there are no ready-made answers.

As we prepare to boldly, openly, and authentically begin our conversations in this space, I leave you with you this question to contemplate concerning culture: Which of these many cultural shifts and changes do you feel present us with the greatest challenges and opportunities as followers of Jesus?

In 2008 the Church of the Brethren hosted a gathering of Young Adults as part of the continuing conversations about ministerial leadership. The goal of the gathering was to discuss the emerging realities for the church as the denomination discerned the needs for a new system of calling ministers. Each of the sessions began with prepared presentations and a series of questions for those gathered to discuss around their tables. After the event, a Minute was prepared from the conversations. Brethren Life and Thought will publish a number of the presentations here over the course of several weeks.

The following presentation was prepared and offered by Jordan Blevins.

Gregory Boyd writes, in an article in the Christian Century,

Jesus revolted against the powers that fragment relationships by modeling what communal life under the reign of God looks like. Though he was the Son of God, he didn’t try to go solo in his life and ministry. He had a network of friends, like Mary and Martha, on whom he could rely when he traveled. He banded with a group of 12 disciples who traveled and ministered with him. And he chose three people (Peter, James and John) to form his most intimate circle of friends. His life manifested the truth that where God reigns, individuals will be united together in close-knit communities.¹

I have been extremely blessed over the last 6 months or so with my involvement in the Young Adult community in the church – both the Church of the Brethren and the larger ecumenical church. I serve on the Young Adult Task Force of the US Conference of the World Council of Churches, the Young Adult Steering Committee of the Church of the Brethren, and was a part of the planning committee for this gathering of young adults that took place in Arizona in December. And as I reflect on all of these experiences, one thing jumps out – young adults get what Gregory Boyd is talking about.

Roughly 30 of us gathered in Arizona in December 2008 to talk about what the future of leadership in the Church of the Brethren should look like – particularly in the context of the Church of the Brethren Ministerial Leadership Paper, and looking at revising that. But, it couldn’t just be that simple. To consider what leadership would look like, we had to think about what the church looks like. And to properly consider what the church looks like, we had to think about what the culture in which the church resides looks like. And so that is how our conversations moved. As Dana Cassell, Matt McKimmy, myself, and Josh Brockway wrestled with the framing of this conversation – and as I looked back over our planning notes, one particular piece of our conversation stuck out at me. Young adults don’t necessarily want to be a part of a committee or team that meets regularly and just does church business, but part of relationships and conversations. We want a more organic process, a more casual form of leadership. This also caused me to reflect on another piece of Gregory Boyd’s article, when he wrote

Think about it. Once a week we go to church (a religious building) rather than seeing ourselves as the church. As good consumers we typically choose a church on the basis of our own preferences, conveniences and needs. Since we’re conditioned to assume that ‘the customer is always right’, we believe we have the right to have things our way. If one church fails to please us, we simply shop for another that will. Since there are only so many of us religious consumers to go around, churches have to compete with one another to acquire and keep as many consumers as possible. This, of course, puts pressure on pastors to sweeten the religious product they’re peddling by adding as many blessings as possible to their message and by refraining from saying or doing anything that might drive consumers away.²

It’s not just in the church but in our culture as well. Young adults don’t want to be “programmed for” but rather “participate in.” It’s not just about program for program’s sake, but relationships in groups that are doing the work of the church. People want to feel like they’re a part of something larger than just themselves.

As such, that is what we tried to do. We began each of our sections for conversation with two brief paper presentations, in order to frame our conversation. Each presenter was invited to leave the group with questions, and once the presentations were over, we moved into a world café style session to wrestle with the questions. World Café moves people from table to table – aiming to get you talking to the largest number of people in the room as possible. We also had sheets of paper down on the tables, with markers, to provide for continuing reflection and conversation in that form, too.

One of the things that really amazed me about this group, and all the gatherings of young adults I have been apart of, has been that desire to enter into relationship with one another. We aren’t just coming together to make procedural decisions, or plot out a plan, but rather to figure out how to be the church, in relationship with one another. Around those world café tables, people disagreed with one another – a lot. I think it is safe to say that at the end of our time together; people still disagreed with one another – a lot. But no one was going anywhere. We were committed to figuring out what the future of the Church of the Brethren was going to look like – together.

We encouraged current church leaders to share are some reflections on leadership with us. One of those reflections came from Deborah DeWinter, of the US Conference of the World Council of Churches. She shared some thoughts to help us frame our conversation, and she said,

To be a leader in the church is to recognize in the other the image of God and to call each other to accountability in this relationship we have as children of God. There is one family: God’s family. One family table: the Lord’s table. One calling (the family business): to love one another, as we have first been loved.  Everything else is commentary. It is to live a life of expectancy (expecting God to work for good in all things)….to call others to join together in experiencing the Advent spirit…eyes and ears, hearts, bodies and minds focused solely on the manger where the unlikely Messiah, the Prince of Peace, promises to turn the kingdoms of this world upside down….doing this, using our gifts; using us.  Imagine that!

I think that vision of leadership is what we were seeking to come to – one that seeks to transform the church into a vital community of believers.

1. Gregory Boyd, “Created for Community: Out of My Cave” The Christian Century. 19 May 2009. http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=6933. [↩]
2. Ibid; http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=6933 [↩]