Reconfiguring the Church: 5 Fatal Mistakes (Wolfgang Simson)

 From Wolfgang Simson, from this document (last sentence there is killer):

1) Jesus came to free mankind from re ligion (as in self-made systems of worship that replaces life before God with human protocol); Christianity has made the very same mistake as Judaism and has become exactly that

-a religion. Just like Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, etc.

2) Christianity has removed Jesus Christ from Kingship, literally beheaded

itself and then told him to his face, ‘we do not want you to rule us. You may save, heal and comfort us, but no way will you rule us.’

The directives of Christ, his law, is disregarded and rebelled against day and night under

disguises like grace, freedom and talk of the Holy Spirit. The entire setup is institutionalized rebellion.

3) Once Jesus as head and leader was gone, a headless Christianity needed a new king, a Saul, a new head, "like everyone else". This is why it has become completely obsessed with human leadership (hello, Senior Pastor, who called you into your unbiblical being?) and its all too well known roles in PBC, planning, budgeting, controlling. Look at the 45,000 denominations,200,000 ministry mum-

and-pop-shops and one RomanCatholic Organization that makes defiance to Christ’s every command its very organizational principle .None of this has anything to do with the Kingdom

.

4) Christianity has failed to demonstrat e and model the City on the Hill, the olony of God, where his will is done on earth as it is in heaven, the very

thing Christ taught us to do. Christianity has particularly

failed to model economic brotherhood, Acts 2 and 4 style sharing, Kingdom economics, the common

wealth of the Kingdom, which requires an ego and greed-- free zone. This can only start where people pray: “Your Kingdom come, my kingdom go.” That is why we need to ponder: Jesus preached the Kingdom, what came was the church.

5) No model, no message. Anyone can see through words, words, and more words,

hollow hypocrisy, igot religion, religious fan clubs and consumer driven shows, particularly the children and close observers of "the ministers." They see first hand the emptiness and dou

ble standards of their ownparents who preach things on pulpits and platforms that they do not live at home. Therefore, the Body of Christ has fled the litmus test of the home, given up the place of organic authenticity, and is now obsessed with plastic, orchestrated, choreographed meetings. What such Christianity misses in local, tangible and transparent authenticity, they make up in social service worlds away. To compensate for the disaster at home, they build wells, school, hospitals with a vengeance and an insatiable helpers complex, stoppering their ears and eyes to see that Jesus, the King, never ask - From Wolfgang Simson, from this document (last sentence there is killer)

(Rev.) Katie Couric is Martin Luther?

Since we're "in the middle of the beginning" of a 2nd (some say 3rd or 4th) Reformation/Re-formation in the church world...

we are living in "this weird moment," but whatever the heck it is, it IS  already 'the next reformation"...

 it's interesting to compare parallel moments in the media world.  The twain definitely meet again this time, as Leonard Sweet has well pointed out with his Gutenberg world/Google world grid.

The catch is, as always, one doesn't know what the (The) key moment is until history is written.
 Is there an assassination of Archduke Ferdinand?  Is there a Wittenburg...and/or  Wittenburg.. Door moment?  9-11?

All that to say..what if Katie Couric's posting her thesis on the door of network TV is a Luther moment? (:

I mean, Phyllis Tickle (a very important writer and interpreter of the times) has suggested that Brian McLaren is the Luther this time around.  But I don't think Brian McLaren would agree..

What would Wolfgang Simson say?  maybe it's a nameless taxi-driving apostle this time?

Or maybe it's someone  famous , yet more unobvious, this time?

Hey, if Focus on the Family thinks she's an antiChristian, maybe she's a prophetess? (:
(see Focus On The Family Attacks 'Today' Show's Couric As 'Anti-Christian)

Read this:

See this analysis, for example:  "It's 70 AD, and 1517, all over again...maybe The Matrix is Luther this time.."



Read this:

Does Katie Couric’s Move to Yahoo Signal the End of Old Media Dominance?

When, years from now, historians try to piece together the exact moment that the balance of cultural power shifted from old media to new, when the old lions guarding the gatehouse were flattened by the democratizing power of the Internet and social media, the events of the last few months, or even the last couple of days, may provide a clue.
On Friday, news broke that Katie Couric, one of the most recognizable stars of television, was leaving ABC for Yahoo News. During any other month, that news alone would have signaled a new world order, an upheaval in the pecking order. But in November 2013, Couric was just the latest high-profile media talent to leave what was once considered a lifetime post for a job at a website that in the public mind’s at least last saw its heyday back when Friendster and Meetups and “the netroots” ruled the digital   link

whatever it takes, including loss of building and pulpit

 Wolfgang Simson talked about house/organic church as the only "persecution-proof structure."

How crazy and ironic...but maybe inevitable...that only persecution will get the Western church back on track (=doing basic church as Bible defines it).


Here's a clip from Francis Chan that's interesting.

Before you watch it, you should know that:

• I am a conscientious objector in the culture wars.
• Let's Lose The Cultural Debate
• I don't expect our nation to be Christian.  There's only one o'those (the Kingdom).
• "..the hostility of the general culture to things Christian
  is only going to increase.
  We should not be surprised by this or even try to change it."
  -Richard Foster 

• Exile=good

• There is no persecution of Christians in America, absolutely none. 

 To paraphrase Paul, though:

"For whatever reason--good or bad, through false motives or true. I rejoice that teh church will finally get it..even if it takes something like persecution."

St Nicole Cotrell posted Chan video, along with some thoughts, in a post called "What Would You Do if Your Church Building Was Gone?".
She asks : "Here is the fundamental question: If your church building were stripped away and your pastor quit preaching from the pulpit, would YOU be able to lead, teach, and bring others to the Lord to the Lord?"
 

audio: Wolfgang Simson on Kingdom economics

here

Justin of Rome: 4 areas of spiritual warfare

Re: the Wolfgang Simson/Justin of Rome quote below..
What if we actually saw these four areas as spiritual warfare?
We have done well with labeling the first two as "demonic" (especially with the first category, we have been far too fundagelical, and obsexxed), but dare we tackle the idolatry/warfare of the other two?

Regarding the last of the 4th, Eugene Peterson, in an amazing section of "Christ Plays in ten Thousand Places," ties Jesus temple tantrum (which of course is about racism/xenophobia, see "temple tantrum" labels at bottom of this post).

Thanks, St. Wolf:

Catechist Justin of Rome, writing about 150, described how Christians helped other people almost systematically to renounce demons and see them being liberated from spiritual oppression mainly in four key areas:

• unlawful sex,
• the secret and magic arts,
• escalating private wealth,
• and violent xenophobia, the hate of foreigners.
  

The early Christians would have seen

• people practicing illicit sex outside of marriage;
• somebody involved in occultism,
• someone accumulating material wealth just for his personal gain;
• and those being rough and violent to foreigners and strangers

as demonically bound, persons who needs the help of Jesus to be released from those overpowering spiritual forces beyond any known human control. As the church stopped focusing on these ministries in later centuries, they left a gaping vacuum, which might need to be filled again by the only organism on earth called and gifted to do so, the church.
-Wolfgang Simson, Houses That Change the World,
p. 50

a matter of words:: naked economic missiology and the "biblically screwy false witness" of attractional church

It's never about language and semantics.
It's always about language and semantics.

It's all we have.
But thank God it's not all that is.
And it's not all that God has.

I can understand  the complaints that recent conversations about Christology, missiology,  ecclesiology...and which precedes which...
as being merely academic  and a waste of time.

They sure can be, and often are.


And they are  just  clanging gongs if not implemented and actualized in actual, practical acts of  indiscriminate love for lepers, tax collectors and prostitutes.
But until we've wasted time in the ivory tower we may not be wasted enough to be any practical good on the streets below.
Theology makes praxis; and praxis makes perfect....and maybe perfect theology.


But again:

Words matter.
Largely because matter is words.
That's not just intriguing linguistics, but cutting-edge physics,
it's good theology .

Theology.
Uh, oh.
Just theory, right?

"There's nothing more practical that theory, and nothing more theoretical  than practice."
When I first heard, and considered that phrase, not even knowing it was Marx, it made sense
(Evangelicals might flinch, but Jesus, Ellul and Žižek would approve),


Theology is formed, forged, and practiced in the street, as we do mission(=do life).
"Tear the curtain down, pull the altar to the ground," the 77s once sang, ostesibly about worship.
But bring down the theology and missiology as well.  That alters our altar..
Yank theology into the streets, and do it among (and with) street people., street walkers,  street fairs, street sweepers.







What's the deal with seminaries with a "Department of Practical Theology"?
Departments  can compartmentalize.
Calling it practical can ensure it's not practiced.
See "God loves donkeys, sweat, entrails and menstruation"


All this talk is not just all talk.
It is necessary to subvert and reorirent our imaginations..

...and our language.
Which matters, and is matter.

Two case studies.

Not long ago, our church had some documents to fill out for the IRS  (Why in the world is church connecting with IRS?..  But that's another post and topic for another day).  So I said to one of our leadership team, "can we have you sign a form after worship?"

Later, as we were signing, she said "I wondered wbat happened.  You said we should sign  after worship, so when we didn't sign after worship, I figured you forgot."

I had absolutely no idea what she meant.

Then it hit me.  In many circles (and in her previous church, the songs that are sung early in the gatherings  are called "worship" or the "worship time" or "worship songs."  So she thought i meant "after the music," and I meant "after the gathering (Of course, my definition was even more problematic)..

It is unbelievable that so few ever even notice, let alone challenge, this common practice in contemporary church.  As I blogged a few years ago:

A strange shift began about fifteen years ago,

Ask most evangelical or charismatic Christians in USAmerica about the place of "worship"
in a gathering. For some strange reason, the word has come to be synonymous with "the songs sung early in the meeting."

"Good morning! After the worship, the children will be dismissed, and Pastor Steve will share from God's word"

We even call the person leading the singing the "worship leader."
Whazzup with that?

Of course, this definition is foreign to Scripture, and to the church in all history and places..until our lifetime in the ... continued

It's only words, but words matter and cement our reality, worldview, hermeneutic, and practical theological/missional acts/axis.

Dan Kimball even asks "Should the church accountant be the one called the 'worship pastor'"? 
He's only half joking.

Walter Brueggeman, who never jokes, quips that "The key issues of worship in the community are fundamentally economic."

Talk to Wolfgang Simson, please.

Note that the term economics comes from the Ancient Greek οἰκονομία (oikonomia, "management of a household, administration") from οἶκος (oikos, "house") + νόμος (nomos, "custom" or "law"), hence "rules of the house(hold)".^[1]  

Evertying is langiuage.
Everything is mission.
Everything is worship.
Everything is economic.

Frost and Hirsch:

Worship therefore is not a utility but an offering, that is a sacrifice, an economy of grace that interrupts and critiques the feverish cycles of production and consumption, which is why  the collection is not fundraising bur cultural critique."  ("The Faith of Leap,"161)

All of life is econimic, including worship.
All worship is missional, including the collection.
All collections are cultural critique.

Don't worry, it's just semantics.
Or semantics that are just.

Time for the second case study.



Music is not worship.
Worship is not music.

Note, though, we need qualifiers here, in the first case study: Music is part of worship, etc.

BUT, our second, deeper, case study:

Church is not a building.
A building is not a church.

No qualifiers needed.

If the Bible is our lexicon.

If life itself is our lexicon.
.
I love Dylan's quote: "The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songs.”

It's our songs, and eventually our lifesongs, that reveal what we believe.

Not our words or church words, as Peter Rollins reminds.

This case study, seeing church as a building, is far deeper, and far more fundamental..

...and inevitably, eventually idolatrous.

"it's not only pathetic, it borders on false witness." (Frost and Hirsch, p. 175, emphasis mine).

Not just because of the "obvious reason": churh is the people..

But because  missiology precedes ecclesiology.

Because, as  Frost and Hirsch emphasize, mission is the  "organizing function," " catalyzing principle"  that "brings to life" the other three functions of church (worship, community, discipleship.

"this makes sense of why Christians refer to the building that house the weekly worship meeting as 'the church.'  It leads Christians to refer to the fact that they 'go to church'.  This phrase in itself is biblically screwy and most Christians know it, but they can't break from the default mode that tells them that the worship experince [not mission/Missio Dei] organizes everything that we understand church to be.  )169)

Tim Neufeld: "Our spirit of outreach is a veil for self-absorbed religious tourism."
And I make the case ( Pepsi, Sex, Elevation, Mission Trips That Are Actually Missional)
that not just tourism, but also voyeurism  and  exhibitionism.

Whats up with short term "quickie" mission trips?  Here's a fuller quote from Tim:

.. I have seen and been a part of many mission trips that have a stated purpose of helping the people they are going to minister to. Churches raise $50,000 to visit an exotic country or flock across the border into Mexico. Team members feel good when they return home because they have served, but missionaries often report that the groups they host are loud, arrogant, culturally insensitive and often more trouble (to the missionary or national pastor) than they are worth. I wonder if the best thing that happens in Mexico over spring break is that American churches stimulate the Mexicali valley economy by buying tacos and Pepsis. Our spirit of outreach is a veil for self-absorbed religious tourism. But we feel good about ourselves when we come home."Our spirit of outreach is a veil for self-absorbed religious tourism. But we feel good about ourselves when we come home." (-Tim Neufeld, Occasio blog)

If you come home feeling bad about yourself, the mission trip probably worked.
Feel good about yourself if if you feel badly about yourself upon re-entry.

It means you have the gift of reassessing your theology, theory, language, worship, economics , sexuality and mission.





Because it all starts with  mission...or, uh, sex:

"For many, sexuality is simply what happens between two people involving physical pleasure. But that's only a small percentage of what sexuality is. Our sexuality is all the ways we strive to reconnect with our world, with each other, and with God." (Rob Bell, "Sex God," p. 42)...

Everything is sexuality...and elevation thereof (as the rabbis and Bono preach)

Male and female in the image of God..
The only way we multiply.
The only we are missional.
Not  talking the sexualizing of mission and  taking sexed up mission trips.
We're taking about  taking a trip into  missional theology (=sexuality).

It's all language.
Naked language.
Sexual language


A missional church will be on the front lines of sexuality...
we cultivate e a missional sexuality.

Examples of such undepartmentalized practiical theology? Check out xxxchurch.com and its Extreme Makeover Brothel Edition, or check into churches/ministries that address and redress human trafficking..
(as opposed to  just "shoulding" on people.with lectures that "Pre-marital sex is evil"  "Abortion is a sin," etc....as true as those truisms are, better to start more holisically, Hebraically...theologically.)

The call is to baptize our sexuality (not sexualize our baptism)

Here's a  quirky video that ties up some of these thoughts:
NOTE: it's not for the religious or faint of heart.
But it offers a reminder that old school church can be so consumed with consumerism (the evil twin of economics, which you'll remember has to do will all of life and worship) that it overlook wayward sexuality.sexual immorality (Remember our definition of sexuality...Language matters).


Uh, if you are still here after that video (:..

Let's talk.
It's not just language.
It always is.

new Wolfgang Simson videos on Kingdom

German Reformation 2.0

Wolfgang Simosn tips us off to this video, with the comment:
"Special times call for special people. There is a new generation of Kingdom revolutionaries and reformers emerging in many places, most of them young and passionate, who want to see the principles of the Kingdom implemented on earth 

nd who will not take “no” for an answer. Many brilliant but not Kingdom-dedicated young leaders out there wanted to see their own hip, post-modern, super-creative initiative spread around the world, only to realize later, (if ever), that this is the same-old, same-old religious guru-driven religiosity that Jesus came to save us from.
But not so Johannes Wöhr, a young apostolic German, whom God is using to influence thousands to believe that Germany, 500 years after Luther, can and will see a reformation that even Luther never dreamed about. Have a look!
-Link

"How wild is the duck?"

photo link

Wolfgang Simson, from a post called, "How wild is the duck?":

The current Babylonian captivity of the Church explained in a story:

“Domestic ducks have a fine life. Their existence is safe, even predictable. With their clipped wings, there they sit in the barnyard, their life laid out for them as straight as an arrow: from the roost to the trough, and on to the pan. The ducks tell themselves and their children: that’s life, it won’t change; it can’t change. It has always been so, and always will be. Only twice a year, in springtime and autumn, there is great excitement in the barnyard, and the little duck-world is tumbled upside down. Their hearts beat faster, adrenalin pumps through their veins, and they even try to leap into the air in a vain attempt to fly. It’s the time when the wild ducks fly high and above the barnyard in their arrow-formation, off and away to a distant destiny. And down below, strange, forbidden, and heretical thoughts shoot through the brain of the domestic duck: what on earth am I doing here? Is not my place up there, in the sky, with them, migrating together with my wild brothers and sisters, high above all barnyards, fences and troughs? But, for good or bad, the spooky feelings are soon gone, as the wild ducks vanish beyond the horizon. And the tame ducks lower their sights, pat each other in affirmation on their backs with their clipped wings, and nod to each other: only a dream, a Fata Morgana! Let’s return to the real world, the world of barnyard, trough – and pan. For sure, to be a domestic duck has a lot of advantages. Usually it’s warm, it gets the fodder in time, and it will hardly ever be eaten by a fox. But it has some drawbacks, too.

Well, it can’t really fly, and the routine numbs it beyond recognition. But, to be a wild duck has its drawbacks too. It has to stand against the cold, uncertainties, and hunger. Quite a price for freedom…”

(From Der Preis des Geldes – The Price of Money – by Simson/Giudici). LINK

audio files (for audiophiles) of "The Starfish Manifesto" by Wolfgang Simson

Awesome!   Very important book.......... Click here

subversive wiki-church

Hopefully the titles of each of these video clips from various church meetings of ours speak for themselves (:
..but I bet they'll need a little unpacking. (:

The basic idea is we ant to be a wiki-church. But part of the irony and paradox I live in is that too often I am "the guy up front telling everyone it's not about the guy up front."

So we love to deconstruct and subvert all that. It probably works best when I am not even there, or way in the background (see our "collage sermon" here. Some of my favorite episodes are when a visitor doesn't realize I am the "pastor" until far into the gathering.

Sometimes the best way to do this is to do something crazy and "unspiritual."
Or duende..

First clip: Wild Wiki-pictionary. At a lunch party, long after many had left, we got crazy (you know how parties go). Wild wiki-pictionary involves someone writing down a crazy pictionary idea (pirates eating spaghetti on the moon, Moses and David Crowder (in a tutu) wrestling in mud...the zanier or more convoluted the better) for someone else to draw, and everyone else to guess:
This time I was drafted to draw Tarzan's idea (he wasn't as hard on me as he was in Peru):





Here (we like to eat...we think Wolfgang Simson is right, see thesis #4 here)below, at a Denny's meeting Nigel (who is now studying art in Italy!) is given a prop, and asked to come up with a spontaneous (Spiritaneous) devotional:



Same day:

Wolfgang Simson: "WHAT IF the church apologizes?

read it here

(Image credit)

Justin of Rome: 4 areas of spiritual oppression

Re: the Wolfgang Simson/Justin of Rome quote below..
What is we actually saw these four areas as spiritual warfare?
We have done well with labeling the first two as "demonic" (especially with the first category, we have been far too fundagelical, and obsexxed), but dare we tackle the idolatry/warfare of the other two?

Regarding the last of the 4th, Eugene Peterson, in an amazing section of "Christ Plays in ten Thousand Places," ties Jesus temple tantrum (which of c0urse is abo0ut racism/xenophobia, see "temple tantrum" labels at bottom of this post).

Thanks, St. Wolf:

Catechist Justin of Rome, writing about 150, described how Christians helped other people almost systematically to renounce demons and see thembeing liberated from spiritual oppression mainly in four key areas:

• unlawful sex,
• the secret and magic arts,
• escalating private wealth,
• and violent xenophobia, the hate of foreigners.
  

The early Christians would have seen

• people practicing illicit sex outside of marriage;
• somebody involved in occultism,
• someone accumulating material wealth just for his personal gain;
• and those being rough and violent to foreigners and strangers

as demonically bound, persons who needs the help of Jesus to be released from those overpowering spiritual forces beyond any known human control. As the church stopped focusing on these ministries in later centuries, they left a gaping vacuum, which might need to be filled again by the only organism on earth called and gifted to do so, the church.
-Wolfgang Simson, Houses That Change the World,
p. 50

Wolfgang Simson: a wedding a week and megachurches of 21

(funny story of photo)

From "Houses That Change the World," p. 26-27:


The invisible line: from organic to organizational:

As any family get-together will teach us, we can accomplish the goal of fellowship without the need to be heavily structured. Families can get along quite well without a master of ceremony, a word of introduction, a special song, a sermon by father and a vote of thanks by mother. These things happen at weddings and other festivals, but not in everyday life. Church, however, is not an artificial performance, it is for everyday life, because it is a way of life.

There is, in each culture, a very important numerical line we can cross: from the organic to the organized, from the informal to the formal, from spontaneous to liturgical. I call this most important line the 20-barrier, because in many cultures 20 is a maximum number where people still feel ”family”, organic and informal, without the need to get formal or organized. Organisms are structured, too, and I am not advocating a total absence of order and structure. But, different to an organized series of meetings which are typically structured from outside, organisms are usually structured from within.

The nature of a meeting defines and therefore limits the size of a meeting. If we cross the ”20-barrier”, the group stops to be organic, and starts to become formal, and even feel the need to follow a set agenda. Effectiveness in relationship and mutual communication goes down, and the need for someone to coach and lead the meeting goes up. As a result, the housechurch looses it’s main original attractions, changes it’s values, and starts to develop totally different dynamics. It often simply stops functioning by itself, spontaneous and lively, lead invisibly and unobtrusively through the inbuilt family mechanisms of fathering and mothering, and needs to be literally ”run”, organized, and visibly lead into a new and organized life form - if there is such a thing.

The original organism is then a thing of the past, still alive, but trapped into a formal structure that chokes it, conditions it, and ultimately could prevent relational and spontaneous fellowship in the name of organized fellowship. Biblical koinonia means fellowship or sharing, giving generously and participating and sharing something with someone. One of the fatal aspects of this line-crossing is that the original organic form of fellowship usually looses it’s internal reproduction potential, and can only be cloned and copied or even literally manufactured and finally mass produced with huge effort from outside that greatly ignores and overrules it’s own inbuilt explosive growth potential. It is a fact of church history that it has always been a swift step from organized religion to institutionalism and fossilization.

Person number 21:
One of the most important decisions in terms of the structure and future of a church anyone can possibly make, therefore, is what you do when person number 21 walks through the door. Structurally, that brings the church into the red phase. You either continue growing upwards and become organized and loose your housechurch-dynamics, and may ultimately hit the 200-barrier, or you divide the housechurch into two or three units and multiply it, thus growing sidewards. You may not even notice a 200-barrier this way.

A wedding a week?

Life in any culture has two aspects, the private and the public, everyday-life and the special events, celebrations of weddings, function and festivals, funerals and traditional happenings. Both aspects of life have their own and valid ways of expression. Everyday life is usually expressed in the family, the basic cell unit of every society and culture. Families are usually very organic, informal, relational and consist of whatever it takes to share lives. Weddings and other functions are extraordinary events, for which everyone duly prepare; they are usually formal, need heavy organization and are often highly structured.

Imagine you would have to attend a wedding each week. It follows the same basic pattern, has even the same bridegroom and bride, and maybe even the food is the same. After some weeks the excitement would considerably wear down. You would know what to expect, and you know what’s going to happen next. It still would remain a nice thing, a beautiful tradition, but it would feel odd to have the same type of festival each week.

We need to be careful not to do this with church. Jesus has shown us a way to live, not only a way to celebrate. Both aspects are necessary, both are good. But everyday life is not like a wedding, as any married couple can tell us. If we allow church to take on only ”celebration structures”, we will start celebrating ”a wedding a week”, and our behavior will soon be far removed from real life and cease to make sense to ordinary people. It would become an artificial weekly event and performance. If church is a God-given way of community life, and if life takes place in the basic unit of a family living in a home, there is nothing more appropriate for the church to be a housechurch, to be the church based in simple, ordinary, everyday homes. Housechurches are not only a way for us humans to express community, they are one of God's means to achieve community.

Small churches may already be far too big:
Creation itself teaches us that nothing healthy grows endlessly, but stops growing at a point and starts multiplying. Bigger is not necessarily better or more beautiful. Could it be that in this perspective - to grow a church bigger - everything is right - expect the direction in which we look? Could it be that the problem is not so much to break the 200-barrier on the way up, but the 20-barrier on the way down? If real church growth spells m-u-l-t-i-p-l-i-c-a-t-i-o-n, then growth may not be upwards at all, but sidewards. Has all that talk about ”big is beautiful” tricked our thinking? If yes, maybe we will have to cut out a Zero in our mindset: an average church would then be just 8, 10 or 12 people; a large church has 15, and a megachurch sports 21.
-Wolfgang Simson

Wolfgang Simson Audio: 5 Steps of Apostolic Migration

Wolfgang Simson on "The 5
Steps of Apostolic Migration..."

Audio here:
Part 1 and Part 2

Summary posted at


THE PAROUSIA NETWORK of House and Cell Churches: link

Emperor Arcadia, spit-laced chicken sandwich, and Free Road Food: Missional Sacraments part 2

(Part 1 here)

Even though I am still part travelling salesman, I've got nothing to sell.

Even though many churches justify it, I can't imagine selling donuts in church.


It is hard to completely

detox down

from the system which

Botoxes-up evangelism as sales.

Isaiah 55:1:

"Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost."

That such "strategy" is counterintuitive to us who are in (so-called)"full-time ministry"
is perhaps hinted at by a verse (8) just a bit further on in that chapter:

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,"
declares the LORD.

I don't even want to think about thinking about the gospel as a product.
I fear that I might even echo the sounds of "saaaaaaaaaaaaaaalesmen."
I don't want to be sold out to Simony (click if that is a new word for you; as it is precisely the point I am about to make).

I've got to give it away indiscriminately.
One can only keep what they give away.

That goes for food.

We are called to give it away on the road.

Following up on several great stories told on
my post on sacraments being intrinsically missional..

..all I can say is the Emperor Arcadia story is amazing,
and hugely relevant.
Thanks to St. Mark Scandrette for posting it online
(it's part of his "Soul Graffiit" book).
Mark is quick to qualify that this is not a program, or even him saying we should do a version of the same.

But without making it a program, I think we should all do a version of the same.

Suffice to say meeting and "ministering to" someone with as sign like this on the bus which is their home...

“I HAVE BEEN CONDUCTING EXPERIMENTS ON MYSELF FOR 30 YEARS—EXPLORING THE MYSTERIES OF CHEMISTRY AND HEALTH. MY PRESCRIPTION: EAT A CLOVE OF GARLIC AND DRINK YOUR OWN URINE AND SEMEN TWICE A DAY.”

..would be a stretch.

Someone named "Emperor Arcadia," (actual photo) who though a bit unstable, has some prevenient-grace sense of sacrament:
Baptism?He ritually washed himself daily in a solution of vinegar, bleach, dish soap, and urine
Communion? When you read the heartbreaking story, you will see how Mark and his friends loving the Emperor over various meals that he often "officiated at"; sacred meals of strawberry milkshake, spit-laced chicken sandwich, Italian sausage sandwich (“Make sure you get it with mayonnaise and provolone cheese")and prime rib dinner are blessed elements indeed.

That is the whole worldview behind missional meals/Love Feasts/church "meatings."

The story ends...I didn't know or guess how it would end...with the whole point.
Which is not the point.
This the paradox we all live in. We love without condition, and without requiring conversion.
"Is an act of love only significant because of the change it produces? Or, can the meaning be in the act itself," Scandrette asks.

The end of the story, someone says
“That sounds like the kind of church I would love to join”

Without being driven by selling our church, or God's Christ, how sweet and Spiritaneous it is when someone says something like that.


It may only happen when sacraments are road food.

And may only begin when you dare to read the story of Emperor Arcadia.
(or listen to it..I remember seeing an audio link somewhere at that link, bit can't find it now.)

Read it now, and come on back to comment.
---------
From the soaring sublime to the (partly) ridiculous....but on the same point:

Who knows what the lyrics to The Guess Who's "Road Food" are intended to be all about (I'm afraid I do know!!)....but I can't refrain from singing the refrain....and knowing that somehow in the Spirit's stealth sovereignty, it's also about putting the Kingdom show...oops, that's exactty the wrong word, how about "food"..on the road.

How missional is that?

"Each night smacks of new wonder..

..Smile and nod your head, dead is live is dead.

......ROAD FOOD!":




,

2-step plan for the church growth anywhere, thanks to the Ethiopian Mennonites

From the amazing (free PDF here..what are you waiting for?) "Houses That Change The World" by Wolfgang Simson:



The Mennonites in Ethiopia:

It is a well-known story by now that the Mennonite Church of America did traditional mission work in Ethiopia. In 1982 the Meserete Kristos Church had around 5.000 members. Then the communist government took over. The government confiscated all the church buildings and properties, and threw most of their leaders into jail.

The Mennonite church became, almost by government decree, a ”lay driven house based” movement. But instead of slowing down the church, the drastic measure of the Communists had the opposite effect. After 10 years the Mennonite movement had grown to 50.000 people. It’s most explosive growth period started, when two of their presumed pillars of growth were taken away: their church buildings and their pastors.

”Now we have a good two-step plan for the growth of the church anywhere,” exclaimed a pastor humorously at the end of a seminar. "Close down all the church buildings, and kindly ask all pastors to take a prolonged vacation!” he said.
p. 171

missional sacraments part 1: unsafe rolls and cheese, catholic nuts..and a bath and meal for the homeless

It all started, not at a 5,000-watt radio station in Fresno, California (see this, if you missed the reference), but at an 11, 000-foot high church in the Andes of Peru.

Our church family is gradually developing a new working theology (and eventual practice)
of (what many call) the "sacraments" as being far more organic and missional than we had ever bargained for.

Whatever ones view of "open" or "closed" communion, "fencing the table," infant baptism, etc. , it should be obvious that both traditional sacraments, though rites for "believers," are inherently evangelistic, as one assumes God desires everyone to eventually celebrate them.

Wesley adopted into Methodism from the Anglicanism he inherited the tradition of infant baptism (though I believe Howard Snyder suggests that if his placement in history were slightly different, he would have become far more anabaptist). He also believed that communion could be a "converting ordinance," and encouraged those desiring to accept Christ to do so as they partook.

So, Peru. 2005. The Hursts and I accompany Ken and Cathie Metz to a church with no bathrooms, in the middle of nowhere near Huancayo, Peru; a church planted by the indigenous peoples of Peru, the Quechua.

I have a great video clip of that day, but can't find it right now, so for now will link you to the clip of our trip there, the classic clip of our bus breaking down, and the unforgettable (probably) Quechua shepherdess we encountered when we got rolling again.

Several gracious Quechua pastors wanted to meet us, and prepared a deligthful meal for us following the worship service (By the way, still no bathrooms nearby....don't ask!). Ken, ever the incarnational missiologist and missionary, smiled widely and said to us gringos something like, "Hey guys, our hosts don't understand a word of English, so let me say this: this cheese on the bread may or may not be safe, but I think maybe we can trust God to protect our stomachs...and it is definitely impolite to refuse."

They insisted we receive second helpings....and thirds.

I have to admit by the fourth helping I resorted to a dirty old trick I learned in Mexico.
(see bottom photo and story here).

But those third helpings were offered in such love, as a token of Kingdom connection, that they were not only safe, but sacramental. I have never experienced such true communion.

I was reminded of the classic and hilarious article in which the Protestant Andrew Alder recalls dunking gingernuts, served informally by a Catholic nun...and found it Holy Communion.

Which in turn reminded me of a new sign we may post over any church "communion table" (see that here)

We are still not making the missional connection yet, as these stories involve a "dialed-down" and organic communion liturgy, yes, but still "in-house" among believers. If you pardon the cheap pun, what about the "out-house" (as in, pre-Christians who are not yet officially converted an in-house) potential of communion.

Let's park here on that first point for awhile, before we get to the missional question:

It is crucial to wrestle with Wolfgang Simson's Thesis #12:

"Rediscovering the "Lord's Supper" to be a real supper with real food: Church tradition has managed to "celebrate the Lord's Supper" in a homeopathic and deeply religious form, characteristically with a few drops of wine, a tasteless cookie and a sad face. However, the "Lord's Supper" was actually more a substantial supper with a symbolic meaning, than a symbolic supper with a substantial meaning. God is restoring eating back into our meeting.
-link

.

Later in the same book:

Since it is quite difficult to feed a cathedral full of people real food, it (The Lord’s Supper) has degenerated into a religious and symbolic ritual, offering microscopic sips of wine and a small wafer, often only to the ‘clergy’ while the masses look on in pious amazement. This has meant that the Lord’s Supper is a supper no more, and lost its powerful meaning, the unprecedented, revolutionary reality, of a redeemed people, irrespective of classes and caste sharing real food with a prophetic meaning, having dinner with God, expecting His physical presence at any time.

William Barclay writes:' The celebration of the Lord’s Supper in a Christian home in the first century and in a cathedral in the twentieth century cannot be more different, they bear no relationship to each other whatsoever.'

C.S. Lewis, in 'Mere Christianity': ''There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why he uses material things like bread and wine to get the new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.'

-link

Years ago, I posted on our website that at our weekly "Love Feast," held at a local restaurant,
that we would meet for informal conversation and connection, and also" celebrate communion similarly to the way the early church did." I kept waiting for someone to ask, "Hey, when are we going to do communion? All we have done is talk, pray, and eat pancakes."

Not that I am suggesting a "This pancake is the body of Christ, broken for you" ritual, but our meals were sacred in a secular way, and social in a deeply sacramentally way.

So, to finally apply this missionally...or just biblically (:
Since the case can be made that missiology precedes and shapes ecclesiology (see part one here)...and therefore sacramentology as well...

Consider some striking quotes which may lead our flock to "serve communion" to the"non-Christian" homeless
(who of course, may well be Jesus in disguise).

First, from a previous post of mine:

Tucked away in Volume III of Oden's Systematic Theology, p. 274, is this:

"In acts of mercy to the homeless, the poor, and the alienated, the serving church offers simple acts of cleansing and feeding. Nothing is more prized to the homeless than a bath and a meal. Nothing is more characteristic of the church's identity and self-offering than bathing and feeding."

A good word, you say, but how is that news?

These three sentences introduce, not a section on social ministry, but (amazingly, without commentary on the radical retooling it entails), the section called
"Bath and Meal,"

which (of course) means:

baptism and communion!

How about that? "Sacrament" as an offering to the poor, and service to the homeless.

Or the other way around?
-link

Peter Rollins:

"Christianity...would seem to demand that we be always prepared to betray our religious systems precisely so that holy water will never be detached from drinking water, and communion bread never be divorced from daily bread."
-Peter Rollins, "The Fidelity of Betrayal" p. 182

Eberhard Arnold on the whole "bath and meal" concept:

"At that time the holy nature of baptism and The Lord's Supper required no ecclesiastical forms. Outwardly, baptism was much more like a simple bath than a church rite, and the Lord's Supper much more like an ordinary meal." -Eberhard Arnold, "The Early Christians in Their Own Words," p. 8

We all come to the table (literally, many of us), and to this table-talk with theological perspectives...but since I assume we are all missional, for lack of a better word; and in favor of baths and meals for Jesus/the homeless..

Weigh in on the sacramental missionality of the Bath and Meal, without throwing out babies with bathwater, and without making the Love Feast a fast.

Especially liturgical folk.
Especially low-church saints.
Especially the homeless.
Especially Jesus.

It hit me that Brandt Russo, who voluntarily dumpster-dives with and for the homeless,
is a communion steward.

---

See:

Emperor Arcadia, spit-laced chicken sandwich, and Free Road Food: Missional Sacraments part 2

All Dogs are Secular, All Djembes are Evil..and All Fasting is Time Travel

As I sit here beside my secular dog..


..computer propped up on a syncretistic djembe..

..listening to non Christian (so non Christian that I could only show the back cover, as the front cover, as any Sigur Ros fan knows, contains nonfrontal nudity!!) worship music,
procrastinating about getting to my spiritual work,

I digress.

No, I PROgress.

That opening sentence was worded so as to reconvert me once again from the naughty gnosticism that was bundled and embedded in the USAmericanevangelicalism that brought me to faith...and heresy.



There is no spoon, and no secular.

And no such a thing as Christian music.

Matter matters.

And as you can see by the photo, my dog is a saved saint and not secular.

There are no Christian bookstores for that matter.

I AM indeed stalling re: getting to my "religious/pastoral" business of the morning (typing official minutes of our church network's annual meeting), but what I am doing now (blogging on a wordly blogging platform about how God is blessing me through a "secular" CD as I reflect on a "secular"..or worse.."syncretistic" book I just bought at a "non-Christian" store.)

That's the point.

Fasting is time travel.

Having collected quotes from Google (a "wordly" search engine, by the way) on various arts and ideas that have been called the equivalent of time travel..

I realized while reading a chapter from a "pagan" magazine (Conde Nast Traveller) included in a chapter in a "syncretistic" book ("The Best American Spiritual Writing 2008") that I just picked up (discount rack, of course) at a heathen store (Borders) in a secular (Riverpark) shopping center...

...that fasting is time travel.

Uh oh, I guess I should have not stopped off in the world after the pastors prayer meeting!!

I have struggled to articulate to myself and others the feeling I experience coming into, living in, and coming out of, a fast. It as if fasting creates an alternative reality...the real one, of course.
(I know, I know, we have been told we can't ever talk about our fasting, as we will lose our reward when you think we are super-spiritual...well, that is a bit out of context, and besides...once I give my next analogy, you'll think less of me, not more (:.....)

Sometimes the only analogy I have for it is drugs! There was a moment, I remember well from the 1970s, when the marijuana would kick in, and I would enter that other world. A la The Wizard of Oz turning from black and white to color. Not that the drug zone was always colorful or good, but it did transport us. And there was always that moment when you "came down" or eased out of the trip....transition back to reality.

The zone I enter and acculturate to when fasting...the place of non-eating...is rewarding and bizzare. Like no other time, I realize how our entire culture...and church culture..revolves around eating. Now, food ain't evil (or I would be a true gnostic), and I agree with St Wolfgang how crucial church "meatings" (see Thesis #4 here) are to Kingdom life...

..but only in the dasting zone do I see what Richard Foster sees so clearly:

In a world dominated by Pizza Temples and Shrines to Golden Arches fasting seems out of step with the times - out of place. (link)

The world we live in is out of step with the times.
Which is why fasting functions as time travel.

All right, having quoted the officially Christian author above, time to quote the dreaded nonChristian source:

Three hours later, I was back in central Osaka, and around me were plate-glass offices, beeping cell phones, trucks, and giggling girls. Flashing lights gave off the time, people rushed to commuter trains, and in McDonald's the cash registers were clicking hectically. Like Rip Van Winkle, or so it seemed, I had awoken to a world several decades out of sync. So soon, so soon, I thought, the fire turns into ash again.
-"The Magic Mountain," page 10 (careful clicking that secular link, a demon might get ya)

The author had just returned from a Buddhist (gasp!) monastery, a place and zone of fasting and discipline and an "air of weightedness and remoteness that seemed to give the place its power".

The secular world I live in is good and of God (The earth is the Lord, and the fullness thereof).
Yet the wordliness and animating empire that wraps around it,..and the principalities that piggyback on it ...can often be sourced in satanic systemic evil..

..of which the most subtle and insidious might be the "decades out of sync"-ness.

I need to time travel more often.

Sometimes that's in my secular Toyota with an anointed secular novel.
Oftentimes that will be via fasting.

Thank God a pilgrim to a Buddhist holy place was used by Jesus to call me to that conviction.

Or maybe it was Satan..after all, I am listening to forcidden music..gee, the singer is gay..
..and maybe my computer picked up some cooodies (and a virus) just by nature of it resting on the djembe.

Don't you know the history of djembes?
They were known a healing drums" in ancient African religions..
(Besides, the Violet Burning sometimes use them for worship songs!!
Watch out, this is the blog you were warned you about!)

Oh, well.

Knowing all that, this while blog post can't possibly be of God.

I had better cast out those demons, and get on to my spiritual business.

Crank up the Sigur Ros, and fast.