Urban fortification

I have been slowly plodding through Lewis Mumford’s classic work The City in History. I was reflecting on this tendency described by Mumford below:

“Thus both the physical form and the institutional life of the city, from the very beginning of the urban implosion, were shaped in no small measure by the irrational and magical purposes of war. From this source sprang the elaborate system of fortifications, with walls, ramparts, towers, canals, ditches, that continued to characterize the chief historic cities, apart from certain special cases—as during the Pax Romana—down to the eighteenth century. The physical structure of the city, in turn, perpetuated the animus, the isolation and self-assertion, that favoured the new institution.” (Mumford, The City in History, 58)

Since the trend began to change in the eighteenth/nineteenth century, I was pondering on the current trend. My undeveloped thought is that the cities are still fortified, but not physically or militarily, rather economically. Cities still operate with hierarchies and classes except that now lineage and coat of arms mean little. Networking and resumes signal pedigree.

“Throughout the greater part of history, enslavement, forced labour, and destruction have accompanied—and penalized—the growth of urban civilization.” (Mumford, The City in History, 56)

The industrial age transformed the traditional practices of slavery to economic slavery. It seems that economics has become the primary determinant of a society.

We have our houses and He has His

I was reading an excerpt from an address of Dietrich Bonhoeffer to a congregation where I came across these words:

“We all know that Christ has, in effect, been eliminated from our lives. Of course, we build him a temple, but we live in our own houses. Christ has become a matter of the church or, rather, of the churchliness of a group, not a matter of life.” (Bonhoeffer, Dietrich Bonhoeffer…, 43)

Every once in a while I find myself in a conversation about the value or need for sacred spaces (usually meaning church buildings). I’m not generally a big fan of church buildings and the building programs and financial indebtedness that it creates. But I think Bonhoeffer hits on one of the more subtle yet more tragic consequences of separate spaces for religious/spiritual activities. Our devotion to Jesus morphs into event-oriented, geographically-specific religious activities. It is no wonder that most Christians have very little daily connection to Christ and his call to take up the cross and follow him. We have compartmentalized Jesus by literally building physical structures for Him. Until our lives and homes become sacred spaces, we will continue to live duplicitously.

Structure without Institutionalization

I have long felt that the subject of church structure has been neglected in our theological reflection and practice of church life. Our sense of the correct structure for the church is often more informed by recent church tradition than the intentions of Jesus and the Scriptures. Hans Kung notes: “All too easily the Church can become a prisoner of the image it has made for itself at one particular period in history.” (Hans Kung, The Church, 4) One of the major challenges is to develop healthy structures that remain unencumbered by institutionalization.

Alan Hirsch offers some good thoughts regarding the importance of church structure without getting bogged down by institutionalization on his blog The Forgotten Ways.

• Is a shift from "organizational survival" to a "movement ethos" feasible?
• How do we transition to a movement ethos?
• How do we generate a movement ethos among the majority of those who call on the name of Jesus?

Change Across Cultures Pt 1

Working in the field of community development I have seen many development agencies attempt to make social changes superficially. For example one organization in the area I work has attempted to change gender roles in the local culture through the use of posters. Often it is a nice sounding project that makes donors happy, but does very little to impact the community. I have been reading Change Across Cultures: A Narrative Approach to Social Transformation by Bruce Bradshaw and wanted to share a little bit from it.

Bradshaw wrestles with this very problem of development agencies defaulting to the quick fix to make changes in a community. He brings a deep, anthropologically informed of cultures and worldviews in to inform the values that drive cultural practices. In the introduction to the book, he describes the ethnic conflict in Albania and explains how mired it is in the worldview of the people. Our quick fix solutions to these types of issues leave the worldview unaddressed and thus the conflicts continue. Bradshaw posits:

"Sustainable cultural change requires the transformation of the values that permeate the cultural narratives, which are the stories of the social structures that comprise the communities in which people live." (Bradshaw, Change Across Cultures, 12)

My reaction when I read the introduction was that he presents the problem beautifully but have no idea how he will offer some workable options to address the deeper issues in societies across the world.

Some Sage Advice

Scot McKnight offers some good advice for all of those blogging on theological subjects. There are ramifications when we blog about controversial issues.

Whose Missionality?

As is commonly the case will all buzz words, the word “missional” is being used diversely. This proliferation of definitions, while inevitable, has created a lot of confusion and diminished the force of the word. It is for this reason that this post is part of a synchroblog attempting to recapture the force of the word missional.

In a recent blog post a young man wrote excitedly about the contrast between churches that were “attractional” and “missional”. His ruminations led him to the conclusion that the “services” at his church should be missional. His heart was in the right place but his distinction between the terms was clearly off-base (at least according to my understanding of the term). This led me to consider the various voices espousing the notion of a missional church. Significant books and reports have focused on this term as the locus for their ecclesiology. Anglicans, American mainliners, and Southern Baptists are all keen to use this term (perhaps a rare time for these disparate groups to use the same terminology).

Part of the confusion is the word is deeply grounded in theology and robust with practical implications at once. It might serve us best by beginning with the theological underpinnings of the term. To be missional is to imitate the mission of God (missio Dei). This notion of the mission of God can best be understood as God’s purposeful and sending nature. The late missiologist, David Bosch, put it succinctly: “Missio Dei [God’s mission] enunciates the good news that God is a God-for-people.” (Bosch, Transforming Mission, 10) Christopher Wright offers a grand exploration of the intensely missional nature of God in The Mission of God:

“The Old Testament tells its story as the story or, rather, as a part of that ultimate and universal story that will ultimately embrace the whole of creation, time, and humanity within its scope. In other words, in reading these texts we are invited to embrace a metanarrative, a grand narrative…. It is the story that stretches from Genesis to Revelation, not merely as a good yarn or even as a classic of epic literature, but fundamentally as a rendering of reality—as account of the universe we inhabit and of the new creation we are destined for.” (Christopher Wright, The Mission of God, 56)

We are invited into this metanarrative to partake in God’s purposes. In other words, we are to be driven by the missional essence of God to be missional in the same way as God. As image-bearing created beings of a missional God, we are carrying the missional DNA of God. The ultimate expression of the mission of God was in the incarnation of Jesus. In the incarnation was a radical, sacrificial sending out of God. It is a posture of self-emptying (kenosis) as we see in Philippians 2. In light of this, how do we respond to Jesus words in John 20:21: “As the Father sent me, so send I you”? The missional essence of God is the core foundation of our missionality.

Where is the disconnect? For some, they miss this foundation of God being missional in nature. It is not just some program from a church. It should characterize the core essence of the church. In getting to the more practical side of it, simply trying to be “missional” by having a missional service misses the point of being the people of the intensely missional God. As the Father sent Jesus, so we are being sent. Our posture should then be that of being sent. The church needs to be going with the desire to love the missional God and love his people. This is a radical departure from a focus on ourselves or on our own church. This is noticeably different from churches building their own kingdoms and trying to attract people to it.

A missional ecclesiology posits the church should be sacrificially representing Jesus in the world. Comfort, prestige, and pride should be abandoned to see Jesus communities established in the most troubled, dark locations of the globe. Nothing short of this kind of going is what it means to represent the missional God. It is for this reason that tweaking a Sunday morning service to be “missional” is still not grasping what it means to be missional.

Check out what all of the others are saying about the word "missional":
Alan Hirsch
Alan Knox
Andrew Jones
Barb Peters
Bill Kinnon
Brad Brisco
Brad Grinnen
Brad Sargent
Brother Maynard
Bryan Riley
Chad Brooks
Chris Wignall
Cobus Van Wyngaard
Dave DeVries
David Best
David Fitch
David Wierzbicki
DoSi
Doug Jones
Duncan McFadzean
Erika Haub
Grace
Jamie Arpin-Ricci
Jeff McQuilkin
John Smulo
Jonathan Brink
JR Rozko
Kathy Escobar
Len Hjalmarson
Makeesha Fisher
Malcolm Lanham
Mark Berry
Mark Petersen
Mark Priddy
Michael Crane
Michael Stewart
Nick Loyd
Patrick Oden
Peggy Brown
Phil Wyman
Richard Pool
Rick Meigs
Rob Robinson
Ron Cole
Scott Marshall
Sonja Andrews
Stephen Shields
Steve Hayes
Tim Thompson
Thom Turner

Jesus at the Center

Returning to Alan Hirsch’s The Forgotten Ways, here is a short but challenging quote.

“So at the heart of all great movements is a recovery of a simple Christology.” (Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways, 85)

My question: What is elemental to a simple Christology?