A Christianity Worth Believing?

Doug Pagitt rolled through Indianapolis on Monday night as part of A Christianity Worth Believing (paperback) book “infomercial” (his words)/Live Occurrence tour.  It was his third visit in the last three years to Lockerbie Central United Methodist and the Earth House Collective.

Last summer, Doug, Tony Jones, and Mark Scandrette stopped by with The Church Basement Roadshow.  It should be noted that Doug’s book Church Re-Imagined was an inspiration for Lockerbie Central UMC as we took on the challenge of resurrecting our church.

This was a long show on a Monday night.  The room was packed, the show lasted two hours and nobody left early.  Here is a picture from my iphone:

There’s much that can be written about the night, but check out Maurice Broaddus‘ take on the night.

Here are a few of my thoughts:

• I Didn’t realize that Desperate Housewives had better theology than most churches. Doug showed this clip from the TV show.

• Doug used this quote a few times from Mark Twain: “What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just aint so.”  Yep, pretty much sums up our problems.
  
• The emergent church isn’t dead, thank you very much.  It is very much alive and thriving. It might be our best last hope. A bunch of critics have tried to bury the emergent church recently.  Like this one last year. Or, more recently, this one.   The old ways of doing church don’t work and people are hungry for a community that is based on conversation, justice, mercy, and friendship.
  

• The conversation that happened on Monday night can’t stop there. Let’s keep getting people together and make our presence felt here in Indianapolis.

Filed under: Christians, Earth House, Indiana, Lockerbie Central United Methodist Church, bible, community, emergent church, theology , church, church basement roadshow, church re-imagined, conversation, desperate housewives, doug pagitt, emergent church, emerging church, friendship, Indiana, Indianapolis, justice, lockerbie central, lockerbie central united methodist, mark scandrette, Mark Twain, maurice broaddus, mercy, postmodern, tony jones, united methodist

Does Church Marketing Suck?

One of my favorite websites is ChurchMarketingSucks.  Their mission is “…to frustrate, educate and motivate the church to communicate, with uncompromising clarity, the truth of Jesus Christ.”  Good stuff.

As an United Methodist, we have launched a new marketing campaign called “Rethink Church.” Much has been written about it.  I like it in theory but, ultimately, I think the theme is a problematic. I don’t see that many UMCs that are truly rethinking church at a time when church definitely needs to be rethought.

But that’s not the point of this post.

I am the layleader of Lockerbie Central United Methodist Church, a small church with a big old church building in downtown Indianapolis.  Its an all volunteer church; we got great musicans but they don’t get paid; we get great pastoral support from a UMC pastor  but he doesn’t get paid, etc.  A lot of what we do now happens through our community collaborative Earth House Collective.

We have  a long way to go but we have captured the imagination of our community a bit.  Despite qualifying as a “nano-church,” we were voted by the readers of  Nuvo Newsweekly, the alternative free weekly newspaper here in central Indiana, as the best house of worship.   I talked to one of their advertising sales people and he said it wasn’t even that close.  We won in a landslide.

We had a debate at our church gathering on Tuesday night.  How do we celebrate this victory?  Or is  it even a victory?

I wanted to put a sign out front that says:

Lockerbie Central United Methodist Church

Worship 6:00 PM Sundays

Voted Best House of Worship by the readers of Nuvo

And then run some ads in Nuvo thanking their readers for their support and thanking NUVO for their support.  They have been very generous in covering the going-ons of our community and our partner Earth House.

When I proposed this I got a bit of a cold stare from a few of our church leaders.  They had a good point.  Church Marketing sucks.  And evangelism mostly sucks too.

I thin the point of contention can be summed up on this blog post by  UMC pastor Taylor Burton Edwards on EmergingUMC:

Probably many of us in the emerging missional movement have given up on institutions doing anything helpful toward real transformation, personal or social. Representational evangelism is thus something we’re more likely to critique than to do, much less endorse. And as for the marketing and seeker service models of passive evangelism, I think most of us have ruled that out on principle long ago. “Attractional is not missional” might be the way we put it.

Burton-Edwards goes on to talk about the oft qouted St. Francis “Preach the Gospel, use words if neccessary.” He warns that “The cultural supports remaining that could interpret actions without words as any sort of proclamation of the good news of God’s reign are in a jumbled shambles at best.”

He concludes,

Evangelism requires of us, at the very least it requires both lives that correspond to the way of Jesus AND a way of telling others, for whom few if any coherent cultural supports exist, why we live as we live and inviting them, personally, to follow Jesus with us.

He is absolutely right.  We have to to find a way of telling others about why we seek to walk in the way of Jesus and why it might make sense to join up and become part of this community.

Thank you for listening.

Filed under: Earth House, Lockerbie Central United Methodist Church, bible, city council, emergent church, theology , Indianapolis, Indiana, Earth House, Lockerbie Central United Methodist Church, united methodist church, lockerbie central, NUVO, jesus, rethink church, Taylor Burton Edwards, Church Marketing, Church Marketing Sucks, Jesus Christ, Nuvo Newsweekly, alternative press, small church, all volunteer church, best house of worship, nano-church, Emerging UMC

From United Methodist Emergent-cy to United Methodist Emergent insurgency?

There has been some push back on a recent post from the United Methodist Reporter comparing the early Methodists to the emergent church. I thought the analogy made sense and was excited about it.  I also wrote about it on my church’s blog.

Rev. Dan Dick who is my favorite UMC blogger and probably the most prolific UMC blogger was not impressed. From his “United Methodist Emergent-cy”:

I read the article in The United Methodist Reporter the other day, and it left me scratching my head.  I cannot figure out how some of our most intelligent thinkers in the church see the emerging/emergent church as a modern-day Methodist movement.  Missional, yes, but evangelical?  Only the later independent and mainline churches that undermined the original intention.  The Methodist movement went to the streets, extending a fairly strict orthodoxy on an unsuspecting world.  Not so, emerging church. The Methodist movement aimed at the lower classes — the workers, blue collar and otherwise, with little advanced education.  Emergent?  Primarily the privileged classes with above average income and education (with some exceptions).  Methodist movement governed by rules, regulations, and protocols.  Emerging/emergent… not so much.  Methodist movement ruled by a hierarchy; uhm, not so’s you’d notice in the emerging church.  Context is hugely different.  Sources and backgrounds, very different.  Focus, fundamentally different.  Energy — okay, energy and passion pretty close (but you can say the same of American Idol).

Now, I might be missing the point of Rev. Dick’s argument because there is a bunch to unpack here.  This is just the last part of the first paragraph of his post! And Dan is also right when saying that the translation of emergent thought and praxis into mainline/mainstream churches has been mostly disingenuous .

But Ill start with this paragraph and see where the conversation leads, if anywhere at all.

1.  “The Methodist movement went to the streets, extending a fairly strict orthodoxy on an unsuspecting world.  Not so, emerging church”

I think part of my confusion with Dan’s post is that he is referring to a longer emergent conversation that I am not aware of.  My understanding of the emergent church is based on the conversation/movement that has coalesced around Emergent Village with voices from a few others who aren’t as directly tied to EV. Think Rob Bell and Shane Claiborne.

The emergent church doesn’t have a “fairly strict orthodoxy” but there are definitely some guiding principles.  From the Emergent Village website:

• Growing”: which indicates our desire to develop as the dreams of God for the healing, redemption, and reconciliation of the world develop.
• “Generative”: which means that we expect our friendship to generate new ideas, connections, opportunities, and works of beauty.
• “Friendship”: Because we firmly hold that living in reconciled friendship trumps traditional orthodoxies – indeed, orthodoxy requires reconciliation as a prerequisite.
• “Missional”: Because we believe that the call of the gospel is an outward, apostolic call into the world.

Though this can’t be construed as “orthodoxy,” perhaps we can see this as A Wesleyan Quadrilateral for the 21st century? Or anti-orthodoxy?  And taking that “fairly strict orthodoxy to an unsuspecting world”?  While most Christians during the last decade plus spent most of their time dreaming of  mega churches and political power in the vehicle of the religious right, emergent folks were quietly organizing their churches and theology for  a post-Christian right America.

2. “The Methodist movement aimed at the lower classes — the workers, blue collar and otherwise, with little advanced education.  Emergent?  Primarily the privileged classes with above average income and education (with some exceptions)”

Are emergents in the prisons, in the fields, in the unemployment lines, at the Wal-Mart? Probably not enough–but what church is?  There are of course some very smart people who head up the emergent conversation–but didn’t John Wesley go to Oxford?

Tony Jones likes to tell the story of Trucker Frank–a pastor-turned truck driver–who embodies working class sensibilities.   Here is a video of Trucker Frank.   Most emergent folks I know are intentional about building a “church” that includes the poor and working class– and art kids!

3.  “Methodist movement governed by rules, regulations, and protocols.  Emerging/emergent… not so much.  Methodist movement ruled by a hierarchy; uhm, not so’s you’d notice in the emerging church.  Context is hugely different.  Sources and backgrounds, very different.  Focus, fundamentally different.  Energy — okay, energy and passion pretty close (but you can say the same of American Idol).”

Yes, the energy and passion of the early Methodists and the emergents are “pretty close” but I wouldn’t say that the emergents’ passion is “American Idol”-esque.  Most of the emergent leaders don’t make much of a living through there writing and church leadership gigs.  There has to be a real passion to keep this thing moving!

There isn’t an emergent hierarchy and Emergent Village has just got rid of its national coordinator position.  But there was seemingly much room to operate within the hierarchy of the early Methodists –especially on the North American Frontier. Here is a quote from Wikipedia bout those early Methodist circuit riders:”

They traveled with few possessions, carrying only what could fit in their saddlebags. They traveled through wilderness and villages, they preached every day at any place available (peoples’ cabins, courthouses, fields, meeting houses, later even basements and street corners.

It was those efforts that built the early Methodist Church and made it the most importan protestant denomination in the country.  Many of the Emergent leaders carry on this same spirit–minus the hierarchy.

Now, I don’t think the Early Methodist movement inspired the emergent convesration all that much–but that both originate from a similar historical place.   I think the emergent conversation overall  could give many UMCers  room to operate in ways that could potentially challenge and transform the United Methodist Church into something much closer to what Wesley was all about.

Filed under: Christians, Lockerbie Central United Methodist Church, bible, church, emergent church, evangelism, prison, prison justice, prison ministry, shane claiborne, theology, united methodist , American idol, blue collar, Christian right, circuit riders, Dan Dick, early methodists, emergent, emergent village, emerging, factories, hierarchy, john wesley, methodists, missional, orthodoxy, postmodern, prison, prisons, rob bell, shane claiborne, tony jones, trucker frank, united methodists, Wal-Mart, Wesleyan Quadrilateral