Urban Theology Overview (FTS_MN520)

Today I began my first of two one-week intensives, Encountering the City: Introduction to Urban Mission with Professor Jude Tiersma Watson. In this class we will learn the basic framework and skills to "exegete" the city and the people that live there, which essentially means that we will observe and interact with the different facets of the city in order to better understand who and what the city is. The end goal is that we would know how to "learn" a city and its people, so that we can more effectively join God in bringing his kingdom to bear on the city.

From an introductory article by our professor:

• In 1900 only 10% of the world's population lived in cities, now 50% of the world's population live in cities, and in 20-30 years it will be 70% with most of the growth in Africa and Asia.
• Latin America is already 80% urbanized.
• Within in the U.S., poverty is now expanding to the suburbs as the affluent "gentry" are returning to the city center.
• Because of the rapid change of cities globally, "much of what we have learned about life in cities, and the theology of cities, may not be relevant for the cities of the future."
• "Urban is both a place and a process. Urbanization is the process of growth within the city. Urbanism is the cultural impact of urbanization."
• The terms "urban ministry" and "inner-city" have been used not so much to designate a location but a certain group of people, the poor and at-risk. With the expansion of poverty to the suburbs, will our language change to match reality?
• Anti-urbanism is deep within the fabric of our nation, especially in our majority culture, and especially in the church. The American Dream is not an urban dream. "The greatest barriers to urban mission are not within the city but wihin the church."
• There is a need for further development of urban theology that focuses on praxis, narrative communication of theology, issues of justice, power, exclusion, racial reconciliation, and how the city is interconnected with suburban and rural areas.
  

Throughout this class I will be especially interested in how to apply city research methods to the university campus and surrounding community as well as looking at how universities are interconnected with the city. This should prove fruitful for campus ministry, especially in urban-based, heavily commuter campuses.

Reflections on... The Church before Constantine (FTS_MC500)

Today we covered the church before Constantine. I should have known this, but only today did I realize that the structure of our lectures follows the "church worksheet" that we have for the class. Over the course of the class we will discuss the church in light of its mission at several different stages and in many of its forms. For each stage or tradition we will discuss it with respect to that particular church tradition's understanding of the nature of the church, its liturgy and sacraments, community and service, mission and witness, and organization and leadership. Today we discussed the church prior to Constantine and the "officializing" of Christianity in the empire. (I didn't say what I have commonly heard said concerning Constantine, that he "Christianized" the empire. Though that could be said, and I stand to be corrected, from what we discussed in class, it seems more that Constantine appropriated the already massive and well-organized institution of the fourth century church. Yep, I don't think we can blame the setbacks of Christendom on Constantine alone. If the picture of the Jewish religious leaders in the Gospels are of any help here, it seems that the tendency towards over-institutionalizing and professionalizing religion runs deep.)

We discussed how understanding of the sacraments changed over the next few centuries before Constantine. As the sacraments gained theological weight, so did the regulations and requirements surrounding them. The combination of high salvific effectiveness attributed to baptism, the high infant mortality rate, and the growing belief in original sin led to increasing practice of infant baptism. This of course, necessitated something like confirmation, to ensure the conversion of the baptised. So, how do you have a high theology of the sacraments while avoiding the high control that resulted? The priesthood of all believers. The sacraments belong to the church, not to a certain group within the church. That is why I think it is good to practice the "you catch 'em, you clean 'em" approach to baptism. (Though that's such a weird way to put it.) My former pastor once told me that he though we para-church campus ministers should be baptizing our new believers. I think he's right, given that we do so in view of the church - the church on campus or the church in the community, it does not matter which. The lines between Church universal, local church, and para-church are not so sharp as we imagine them. The important thing is that we remain aware that we all represent the Church, regardless whether that shows up on our business card or in our email address or not.

Similarly, with the Lord's Supper, teachers began to attribute more and more signifance to the physical bread and wine in response to the Docetists who downplayed the physical and material nature of Christian faith. Because of the growing significance of the Lord's Supper, and the growth of groups within the church whose practices were less than orthodox, bishops had to exercise more and more control. Though I'm sure that the motivation wasn't merely for power and control, over the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries, the divide between the clergy and laity grew so that the clergy became spiritual "providers" instead of one gifted believer among many. Just in case it's not clear, I think that was not the most helpful development...

We watched another video in class, this time from PBS Frontline, "From Jesus to Christ." In the video we were shown a piece of paper that one would receive for sacrificing to the emperor. This "receipt" was necessary for avoiding persecution for not worshiping the emperor at the appointed times. Though they didn't mention it in the video, I suspect that punishmet for not having the ticket ranged from fines to imprisonment to beatings to death. It's not hard to imagine that some of the 3rd century Christians found in this a direct fulfillment of the "mark of the beast" in John's Revelation.

Reflections on... First Century Churches (FTS_MC500)

Today we wrapped up our discussion on First Century Discussion, beginning with a small group discussion time centered on Acts 2:42-47. It's always interesting to discuss passages that we in Campus Crusade for Christ focus on so heavily. Not that we own any of these passages, far from it, but discussions outside of a CCC context always bear out how we selectively read passages, for good and ill. We call this one the Transformational Community passage, because it is the first example of a transformational community where people are being won to Christ, built up in their faith, and sent out to reach others. We emphasize well the reality of "biblical teaching, prayer, and real koininia (fellowship)" present in the "Acts 2" church. At the center of our hope for the college campus is the vision of seeing students embody this kind of community where they and the surrounding community will be awe of the ways in which God is at work, seeing others added to the community of believers with great regularity, until "everyone knows someone that truly follows Jesus," as we say. Of course, our reading of Acts 2 is selective, as are others'. The problem is that in our standard schema of a "transformational community" for the campus we leave out some of the most prominent characterizations of this Acts 2 community: celebrating the Eucharist (if that is indeed what "breaking bread" refers to; if not then at least true table fellowship should be practiced on campus), "signs and wonders" (which here was done by the apostles but seems to have spread throughout the church in the New Testament [Phillip in Acts 8:4-8, many in Corinth in 1 Corinthians 12:4-11, 27-31), observance of regular prayer times, radical hospitality and generosity for the common good, finding favor with outsiders, and daily interaction with each other and those outside such that there could be daily entrance into the new community of "the saved." I see some of these things changing on a grassroots level, but I hope that we as leaders and campus workers will promote it and not resist it in the eyars to come.

We also discussed Christian Worship in the First Century, Christian Mission in the First Century, and Leadership in the First Century church. It was interesting to note that the "order of worship" in mostly Jewish churches was inherited from the synagogue: opening prayer and praise, creedal confession and benedictions, reading from the Scriptures, and a homily. According to Dr. Bolger, many of these first Jewish churches, the house in which the synagogue met became the house in which the church met. The order of worship in those churches which had little to no Jewish influence were much more fluid and varied, cf. the letters to the Corinthians and the Thessalonians. As we were discussing, I was reminded of stories Dr. Jay Travis told about Muslims who begin to believe in Isa (Jesus) and meet to read the Quran and the Injil (New Testament), pray for each other, and apply the teachings of Jesus to their lives. The form of their meetings remain the same, but the content and the resulting community changes.

One last bit of interest: it was observed that there is little evidence that collecting money was a regular (certainly not weekly) part of the meeting together of the first churches. As Ravi Zacharias has wryly asked in this regard, what does it say about us that we hold tightly to a weekly offering but with reluctance institute a monthly Lord's Supper of stale crackers and a thimble of grape juice? It betrays our financial and dogmatic fears at worst, and our troublesome professionalizing of the clergy at best. Rather, it would seem, we should celebrate communion weekly in smaller setting where people are know and food can be enjoyed, and congregational giving should be generous and according to needs.

The Two Tasks

"...Responsible Christians face two tasks-that of saving the soul and that of saving the mind. No civilization can endure with its mind being as confused and disordered as ours is today. All our ills stem proximately from the false philosophies that have been let loose in the world and that are now being taught in the universities.... Save the university and you save Western civilization and therewith the world."

-Dr. Charles Malik, Lebanese educator and statesman

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The United States Supreme Court ruled, "The classroom is peculiarly the 'marketplace of ideas.' The Nation's future depends upon leaders trained through wide exposure to that robust exchange of ideas which discovers truth 'out of a multitude of tongues, [rather] than through any kind of authoritative selection."

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— United States v. Associated Press, 52 F. Supp. 362, 372.

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"We have a gospel to proclaim. We have to proclaim it not merely to individuals in their personal and domestic lives. . . . we have to proclaim it as part of the continuing conversation which shapes public doctrine. It must be heard in the conversation of economists, psychiatrists, educators, scientists, and politicians."

—Lesslie Newbigin, Truth To Tell: The Gospel as Public Truth (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1991), p. 64.

->for more on what some are doing about this, check out www.clm.org

We ignore the academy and marketplace of ideas at great peril to the rest of the world that is at their mercy and the subject of their policies and publications. Let us embrace the call to love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind. Only then can we fulfill the call to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Training and Tradition

Some thoughts on training for Christian ministry.

Where I work we talk about it a lot, so I thought, why not a little more? It's natural for us as humans to find that the things that we have systematized and refined for the purposes of understanding and transferability have lost their edge and clarity of vision. So, it's helpful and necessary to rethink old concepts reconstituted in new contexts so as to bring the vision back into focus and the life back into the methods.

In thinking about training, we want to train so as to enable the vision to take root and grow in the community of faith for the sake of the of the world. In our training we want not so much to instruct as to enable, to provide the trellises without which the vines have nowhere to go. We want to make level the roads to freedom, creativity, and inspiration so that students can engage authentically in Christ with the world around them, speaking and acting in the world and as part of the world so as to be light and salt, the truth and redemptive power of the Gospel, to bring people to Christ and Christ to the people.


"Tradition, then, is not something which is essentially static and backward looking. It looks to the past and seeks to learn from its inheritance; but it looks equally to the present and the future, seeking in the acquired wisdom of former generations appropriate ways and means of dealing with new challenges and circumstances; seeking to adapt itself, so that its voice may be heard speaking in the language which today's generation can hear and understand; committed to the view that what it offers is of lasting value, but open in principle to the revision and adaptation which ongoing engagement with reality and new discoveries may compel it to accept." - Trevor Hart in Faith Thinking, p. 180

don't just explain it...

"Ironically, an estimated 90% of the world's Chirstian workers presenting the gospel use highly literate communication styles. They use the printed page or expositional, analytical and logical presentations of God's word. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, for oral learners to hear and understand the message and communicate it to others."

"Logical," "analytical," "presentation." Sound familiar? Where I'm from that's exactly what "sharing the Gospel" is, a logical presentation of the principles of the Gospel. Of course, there's nothing wrong about that. The Gospel message is logical, and any message is communicated in some form or another, many times in something like a presentation.

But, that's exactly part of the problem, that this understanding of "sharing the Gospel" is rooted in where I'm from. I am the product of all that I have inherited culturally, and part of that is a highly literate, abstract-conceptual form of thinking that looks for and responds to "logical presentations." But not everyone is like this, really, most people in the world are not like this, and even for those that are, it's only a percentage of their whole preferred learning methods. Literacy and literate thinking is not the norm, orality and oral communication is.

"All societies, including those having a highly literate segment, have oral comunication at their core. Oral communication is the basic function on which writing and literacy is based. When literacy persists in a culture for generations, it begins to change the way people think, act and communicate...These members of a literate society then tend to communicate the gospel in the literate style that speaks to them."

So, is the goal to make everyone literate like those of us who are? Is that the only way that they can understand the Gospel? Reason and experience tell us otherwise. Just as Paul and the first centuries of Christians translated the Gospel into the Greek culture around them, so we must work to translate the Gospel into the cultures that we go to or find ourselves in. And this is more than just using different words or languages; it involves entirely different forms of communication including "stories, proverbs, poetry, chants, music, dances, ceremonies and rites of passage."

a new effort

I was saved from a Hindu family in 1995 through a cross-cultural missionary. I had a desire to learn more about the word of God and I shared this with the missionary. The missionary sent me to Bible College in 1996... I started sharing the good news in the way as I learnt in the Bible College.. To my surprise my people were not able to understand my message. A few people accepted the Lord after much labour...there were little results.
In 1999 I attended a seminar where I learnt how to communicate the gospel using different oral methods. I understood the problem in my communication as I was mostly using a lecture method with printed books, which I learnt in the Bible school. After the seminar I went to the village but this time I changed my way of communication. I started using a storytelling method in my native language. I used gospel songs and the traditional music of my people. This time the people in the villages began to understand the gospel in a better way. As a result of it people began to come in large numbers. Many accepted Christ and took baptism. There was on church with few baptized members in 1999...now in 2004, in six years we have 75 churches with 1350 baptized members and 100 more people are ready for baptism.

This is just one of many stories from all over the world that have been surfacing for the past decade (at least) concerning a paradigm shift in how people are introduced to God, Jesus, and Christianity and subsequently discipled in the faith. For the next few weeks I will be blogging about this in response to the book, Making Disciples of Oral Learners, published by the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, originally published as a paper for their 2004 forum in Thailand.

Of course, at face value, you may be wondering what this has to do with evangelism in the United States. I mean, we can all read and write, right? Well, yes, and no, and we'll discuss that as we go. I'll just say for now that our ability to read and write (or lack thereof) isn't as fundamental as we'd like to think it is, and that even though we're a highly literate culture, most of us still learn best through oral methods (including pictures and movies), and, it is story and stories that shape our worldview more than anything else.

So, if you'd like to check the book out for yourself, please do. You can read it for free online! And, until next time, read a good story or two...

para-church phase out response

This is a response to this blog entry about a proposal to phase out the campus ministry of CCC. Neither the original blog nor my response are the opinions of CCC or the expression of anything bad or mean or disrespectful towards the past, present, or future of CCC. It's just some thoughts, theories, and desires for how things might be, hopefully in a way that is faithful to the heart of Jesus and the teaching of the New Testament.

Here's the original blog post: Parachurch Phase-out

Here's my response:

Kristie, you are thinking in a very good direction. Along with Melinda, I am also on staff in the Red River Region. I was involved with Crusade in limited fashion during college through my church's partnership with WSN and some relationships with staff and cru folk. I was on STINT for two years in East Asia with a team made up only from my church, and have since returned to be part of the Oklahoma Catalytic team.
Since my long term involvement with Crusade happened as a result of my church's partnership with WSN, I have always felt the need for a closer relationship between the campus ministry and the local church. So, like I said, you're thinking in a very good direction.
It's always precarious to make sweeping generalizations about things that are beyond one's ability to comprehensively evaluate, but I'm going to try anyway (I guess I just did...). There's an unhealthy split between the campus ministry and the local church. I say that because most Crusade students I know have very limited connection to any local church, if they have any at all. Most only attend a Sunday service weekly at best. I keep hearing from students the line that "In crusade I get fellowship, mission, Bible teaching, worship. Why should I go to church? Isn't that what it's for?"
Well, it seems to me that many Crusade students, and others probably, don't know what church is, and we may in fact need better definitions. I think most everyone realizes that the church is not the building; it is the people of God. But, if that is it, then when we plant movements, are we not then planting churches?
Recently at a Growing and Planting Movements conference, I asked this question during a Q&A time, "What's the difference between building movements and planting churches?" The answer was several minutes of silence. I think this was in part due to the fact that people using the language of building movements is new and very similar to the rapidly mulitplying church planting movements going on around the world. (We were even given the IMB's guide to planting Rapidly Multiplying Church Planting movements at our regional time at this last CSU conference.) It seems that this is a question that we are still working on.
From what one of the national team said, Campus Crusade for Christ as an organization has had a really good track record in working with local churches and denominations. Just read _Come Help Change the World_ and you can see that, but the campus ministry has not always been as successful in partnering with local churches and denominations. There are pockets where this is not the case, but until recently in Catalytic, it has not been something we have pursued with much conviction. I pray this continues to change.
In honor of Justin Timberlake with respect to para-church ministry, I would like to bring "para" back. Parachurch was meant to come along side the local church to strengthen it and reach out in ways that it couldn't (and many times wouldn't). But when it comes to campus ministry, it is not good enough simply that "we do our thing, they do theirs, and hopefully some crossover will happen when students graduate and join a church or someone from the church joins staff or supports us."
Like you Kristie, I would love to see the day when we work ourselves out of a job when it comes to doing all of the evangelism and discipleship on campus. If we are really going to reach all of the students of the world, it's going to happen through the ministry of local churches who stay there year after year and continue to train and disciple college students in large numbers as they pass through college. It will take a movement of "volunteers", plain and simple. Churches in their very nature are much more stable than campus ministries and much less dependent on the coming and going student leaders.
And I say this much not even having mentioned the question "what is church?" If a proper, God-ordained, apostolically proclaimed visible church body includes things like baptism, eucharist, elders, deacons, discipline, and social justice then we've got a problem when students feel that Crusade is their church because the worship, evangelize, fellowship, and learn the Word in that community. Because, in reality, many campus ministries (to overgeneralize again) function like churches on campus with staff as elders, student leaders as deacons, focusing on evangelism and discipleship without much concern for social justice and no baptisms or eucharist. (My pastor even remarked to me one day that he thought it would be great if orgs like CCC started baptizing and serving communion...) If all that students of a campus ministry see church for is getting baptized and occasional sunday mornings with communion if they come on the right day, then we have done a terrible injustice to them and to the church, and we have not set them up with a good ecclesiology to live from before and after they graduate.
I do think the catalytic style is heading in the right direction on this, but it must keep adapting. Reproducing staffed campus models on unstaffed campuses is not what we should aim for. This is, I believe, what Movements Everywhere and Mulitple Movements are all about, and without local church involvement and ownership, it will not succeed. (Unless of course God decides to reject the local church in this and work outside of it, but I don't think that is the case, and we would still continue to run into the same problems down the road and find that we would need to start planting churches anyway.) The campus ministry is not in the business of planting churches and shouldn't be, the freshman to senior cycle is too fast and volatile. But, if we do not work closely with local churches in building movements everywhere in every group on campus, then we will be planting churches, lopsided and unhealthy ones at that. And I don't know anyone in the campus ministry that wants to start planting CCC churches.
So, all that to say I like your proposal, but I would tweak a few things. I do think it will be necessary for Crusade staff to remain intimately involved on campus, but in a different way. My vision of the staff of the future would be that a majority of the campus staff would be catalytic and forerunners. The primary goals of the staff would be to network and build partnerships with local churches to reach campuses near them and to train church volunteers and student leaders in building and sustaining mulitplying movements of evangelism and discipleship. Bible studies and weekly meetings and such for the different movements on campus would be the responsibility of the students under the guidance and support of church volunteers and in line with the vision of CCC as communicated through the staff.
Staff would be the ones that keep expanding things, taking on new campuses and partnerships, both locally and with WSN, and giving vision and training for the volunteers and student leaders. There will certainly be room for continued one-to-one discipleship with students (because the staff still need to be intimately connected to the student world), but it will be limited.
One area in which I see great potential in this is in a CCC strategy called No Boundaries (www.nobounds.org) in which staff seek to plant churches in hard to reach countries through college students. Students who have been involved in campus ministry within the context of a chruch would be very prepared to enter into this kind of effort.
So, that's quite a comment, I know. I always seem to post long comments... But, please take it as a complement to the thought-provokingness of your post. I hope this discussion continues and even moves up the chain, which I'm sure it has in some fashion already. We probably just don't know about it yet.