More Great Ideas I’m Borrowing From The Pentecostals
February 9, 2012
From middle school through my senior year of high school, one of the highlights of my year was getting away from my parents for five days every Summer. Both Wisconsin and Minnesota have strong camp programs, Spencer Lake and Lake Geneva respectively. These were where I could eat junk food, flirt with girls, screw around with my pals, get “blobbed,” and have rather intense ecstatic experiences in the nightly worship services. It’s where I first felt a call to ministry, and it helped give needed “high spots” in my spiritual life.
In short, I treasure(d) my time at camp. The annual Youth Conference was alright, but never like camp.
Additionally, I realize now that it helped to make me feel an affinity for my “diocese.” Over the years I made reasonably good friends from all over the state. We’d meet up at camp and conference, and exchange correspondence; sometimes we’d even go to each other’s houses. It was from one of these friends that I first heard DC Talk (the Nu Thang record); it was here that I first got wind of the punk and hardrock off Tooth & Nail records — back before they sold out, yo. I came to perceive that I was part of this thing called the Assemblies of God. I had friends here, I felt connected.
Now I realize that many Episcopal parishes do camps in the summer. But in my experience, these have mostly been done on a parish by parish basis and only sometimes together, and even then rarely more than a small handful of them. But imagine, if you will, a set Episcopalian campground where not only could there be larger annual 5 day camps for youth and families (we often did Family Camp as well), but the grounds could host all kinds of smaller parish and larger diocene sized events. In my experience, it becomes something like a “spiritual hub.”
Anyway, it seems to me that there could be a lot of good done for the health of a diocese if they had such a camp. At the very least, they did a lot for me as a kid.
On Not Caring About Stemming the Tide of Mainline Decline
January 12, 2012
It appears that Anglicans are really quite talented at creating entire cottage industries around problems of identity. Books about “Anglican Identity” and “What is Anglicanism?” abound in numbers far greater than you may at first imagine. I feel as though, if one is allowed to judge by certain internet circles, we are about to start on a whole new creation when finally – about 30 years too late – we get around to addressing the “problem” of “mainline decline.”
The facts are…
- We’re getting older
- We’re getting smaller
- We’re getting poorer
- We’re getting less and less important in our social stature
Well, WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT!!!????
- Should we eschew hierarchy?
- Should we come up with THE missional strategy?
- Should we maybe wear khakis to preach?
- Should we mess with the liturgies? Make God more feminine; black; expansive; Celtic; relevant?
Now, these are not all merely banal questions (though perhaps some are), but I would like to suggest that so long as the beginning and focal point of the discussion is centered around decline and “stemming the tide,” then we’ve already failed.
This line of reasoning puts us immediately in a reactionary position. “What are we going to do about this threat? (This too is where the “identity fetish” creeps in. Constantly going in circles trying to fence the boundaries of identity means that less and less do we care to look to Jesus to judge what we think it important about our identity).
It also creates an atmosphere where even practices and beliefs that are very good are swept aside by the well-meaning or self-proclaimed “prophets” and “reformers.”
What often goes overlooked is how deeply institutional this line of reasoning is, and how ironic it is that these questions are often under the guise of being “anti-institutional.” Concern about numbers and colleges and seminaries and ages are all very institutional issues. (Though, far be it from me to be anti-institutional.)
Allow me to suggest that whether numbers are waxing or waning, the primary issue ought to be one of praying, working, longing, to be faithful to our Lord and faithful to the proclamation of the Gospel. I know this might seem just empty and pious word-mixing. The point I’m trying to make, though, isn’t about out-piousing anybody, but about shifting the seat of discernment from one of reactionary concern about structures to a positive freedom to love and worship our Lord and love our neighbor without concern for “maintaining” the Episcopal Church.
Doing otherwise evinces a deep lack of faith. As if somehow Christ isn’t risen and it’s up to us to pick up the Church by her bootstraps and keep her going! (Thus, even now the pelagian shadow of liberal protestantism lurks behind every question and every answer)
I think we could all stand to learn from people like Derek Olsen, who when prodded on the question of a drop in numbers responds not by saying what ought to go in order to stop the bleeding, but by pointing out what ought not be negotiable because they are the things that help to keep us faithful to the Gospel that we’ve received. Or +Rowan Williams who concludes his astounding essay “God” in this way:
“In a church that is in many ways deeply wedded to ‘territorial’ preoccupations, it is unlikely that the gift and promise of the non-territorial God will be clearly discernible. In other words, a church that is concerned about its internal politics will not transform the political in the way that is in fact made possible by Jesus. The desire to secure purity and control in the Church (which can be a preoccupation as much of ‘progressives’ as of ‘traditionalists’) looks to a territory in which believers may see in one another a reassuring sameness; and when believers are looking at one another to test that assurance, they are less likely to be attending to the foundational absence on which the life of the community rests. And if the contemplative life is central in some way to the integrity of the Church at large, it is because of this: not to point to ‘values’ above and beyond the concerns of the world, not to pass judgment on the unspiritual conflicts of the Church or society, but to witness to the way in which a life may be constructed in which all acts are referrable to God and in which the consequent ‘deregionalizing’ of the life of the spirit, life before God, impacts increasingly upon the understanding of prayer. It is to do with the poverty and wealth of the everyday; with the fullness and emptiness of faith.”
An Attempt at Composing a Collect
August 18, 2011
Well, things have been quite slow around here, and I can’t promise they’ll speed up. Nevertheless I wanted to try and run a collect by ya’ll and see what you thought. It’s a prayer for peace that I’m basing on the book of Ephesians. Though slightly clunky so far, it is an attempt not only to get at a core part of Paul’s epistle, but also to maintain it’s distinctive trinitarian shape, which flows less easily than a traditional Anglican collect. One of the reasons I wanted to write it is for the prayer and fasting group that some of us are loosely involved in, for easy memorization and recitation when we’re not near other prayer resources. What would you change?
“Almighty God, heavenly Father, who is rich in mercy, and who by grace has made of many nations a single people in Jesus Christ, having broken down the dividing walls of hostility: Preach peace, we ask, to those far off and those near who are dead in trespasses and caught up in the violence of the world, that we with them may be made alive together with Christ, who is our peace and through whom we have access in one Spirit to You. Amen”
- Paperback: 272 pages
- Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell; 1 edition (December 4, 2007)
- ISBN-10: 1405102713
- ISBN-13: 978-1405102711
My thanks to Blackwell for the review copy.
Very often times it feels like the very last thing the world needs is another introduction to Topic X. Not least to theology. Aren’t intro’s just the easy way for a teacher to get published with very little work or creativity? And it’s not like there aren’t good ones out there. Alister McGrath is now into the 5th ed of his (mostly historical) Christian Theology: An Introduction (with a simpler version of it, as well as a Reader 4th ed, and an intro to historical theology). Christopher Morse’s famous Not Every Spirit: A Dogmatics of Christian Disbelief is also a great intro. (My thanks to David Congdon for the recommendation).
Yet even in such a world, Mark A. McIntosh’s Divine Teaching: An Introduction to Christian Theology offers something unique and irresistible. I found myself learning much more from this intro than I do often times from “academic” pieces. There were so many places to pause and reflect, to soak in a rich theological wisdom. And at a shy 252 total pages, it was really quite astonishing what he was able to fit in.
This brevity, among other things, makes this book a standout from a pedagogical standpoint. Being as short as it is, there is a significant amount of free room that a teacher could take to supplement and expand the book in whatever way is deemed necessary for the kind of school or class that they are teaching. Are you at a Pentecostal school? Feel free to throw some readings in on pneumatology. Are you at a Catholic school? Take the time and compare McIntosh’s readings of Saints Augustine and Thomas on Sin or the Trinity. Are you Anglican? Throw some Herbert in there… anywhere could do as the whole book revolves around the contemplative life of prayer as being taught by the actions of the Holy Trinity.
And this life of prayer as participation in and learning from the Trinity is the broad outline of the book, hence the title. McIntosh has much experience in this. His PhD work was in Balthasar and he has written several works on “mystical theology” (see here and here) and even a little book for teaching in Church on the Mysteries of Faith. He is an Episcopal priest and is now teaching at Durham (in England). He is also an Anglican representative at this latest ARCIC meeting between Anglicans and Roman Catholics.
The beginning of the book functions as a sort of prologue for those led to be skeptical of theology as mere irrational nonsense. Can one understand theology and not be a believer?, he asks. His answer is, surprisingly, no, not really. One can come to acquire knowledge of a tradition and this can be taught, but McIntosh says to be truly taught by God, one’s own inner life must be made ready to receive this knowledge as a gift. To show how this is so, he introduces a method that he uses several times throughout the book. On the left third of the page, he has a text, here it is Romans 6.3-11 but he does this for several other Scriptural passages and also works like the Nicene Creed; and on the right he comments on it. It’s really quite helpful. Nevertheless he does address the relationship of reason and faith by way of an exposition of Cardinal Newman’s Oxford Sermons.
From this first part of the book, “How God Makes Theologians,” McIntosh moves onto the larger more constructive part “Theology’s Search for Understanding,” in which he begins with the Mystery of Salvation, to the Divine Life, and finally to Creaturely Life. This movement, he believes, represents the kind of shape that Christians have experienced from the beginning. Trinitarian reflection came from a deep meditation and struggle with what had happened to them in Christ and Pentecost. He would no doubt agree with David Bentley Hart that early Christian trinitarian thought was a kind of phenomenology of salvation. Among his teaching methods, at the end of each chapter, McIntosh pauses for “Landmarks” and “Pathfinding.” In this section on salvation he includes Irenaeus, Augustine and Anselm. While recognizing that there are exaggerated critiques of Anselm available, he ultimately agrees with Lossky that Anselm (and much subsequent Western reflection) focuses on the Cross to the exclusion of the entire movement of the mysteries of faith. In the “Pathfinding” section, he brings in Orthodox, Feminist and Girardian contributions to soteriology.
But this critical thought about salvation itself gives way to a deeper movement from how God revealed God in Christ, to how God has always been if this is the one God. This middle section on the Trinity takes up the bulk of the book and includes a comprehensive walk through St. Augustine’s entire book de Trinitate! These 20 pages alone are worth the price of the book. But he also includes Karl Barth on the “God Who Loves in Freedom.”
The final section on Creaturely life doesn’t disappoint either. He begins with the fact that it is Easter which gives the ultimate shape to creaturely life, drawing generously on James Alison. But the main section rightly revolves around Aquinas, yet he also brings Pascal alive in a way I hadn’t expected. The combination of the two acted as a kind of apophatic trinitarian anthropology, it was quite a surprise and ended the book well. I appreciate that he didn’t feel the need to begin with this section to “ground” theology in epistemology. In this way he followed the general shape of traditional dogmatics so that even a strident Protestant couldn’t protest too much.
The book is not confessional in any denominational sense. And while the book is clearly more on the “catholic” side of things, this lack of polemic or overt sense of identifying with any group means that Divine Teaching can be used profitably by anyone who wants to teach from within the Nicene tradition.
McIntosh’s uncompromisingly Christian and trinitarian approach means that this book might not be ideal for use in a school where there is generally taken the traditional “comparative religion” or “religious studies” approach. Yet, if a school was open to actually teaching Christian theology from a “post-liberal” (in the broadest sense of that word) position, this is precisely the book I would use; not least since approaching Christian thought from the position of prayer and “mystical participation” would likely connect well with my generation of kids. But in order to do this, one would have to supplement the book with something to do with other faiths, as this is one area not really addressed in the book. Graham Ward’s True Religion could fill that void quite nicely I imagine.
I don’t know what it says about the book, but, as I often meditate on how I would teach theology in the future, this book has jumped to the very top of the list. There are so many strengths to the book, many of which I’ve tried to point out. Chief among them is that this book is all about how we might actually learn about God from God, in our inmost being, not as bits of true information, but as an abiding light that will illuminate all other seeing and knowing.
We see develop rather quickly in the Church within the New Testament people, often ‘virgins and widows,’ who are ‘set apart’ for what we might call ‘full time ministry.’ (The terms are anachronistic to be sure, but just roll with me) So we see from a very early point a ‘mixed economy’ of forms of life in the Church. Some work and produce and give, and some ‘mend tents’ while still doing such ‘full time ministry,’ but is has always been deemed necessary to have a group of people dedicated to the life of the Church who are fully dependent on her life, but who alone can give a fuller expression to her life. We would be incomplete without the virgins and widows. The development of monasticism and the incredible importance of the religous throughout our history only testify all the more to this.
Though not quite as prominent as it once was (or so it seems to me anyway), it is not at all uncommon to see a Roman Catholic parish system, including schools and ministry to the poor, supported by small groups of monks and/or nuns (heck we could even include the celibate priesthood here).
Yet, despite this decline, there has been developing since at least the Jesus People Movement, communities of Protestants who in rough ways approximate this mixed economy of life. Anglicanism too has a small but not unimportant religious life – though we might pray for this to grow all the more. Among the developments has been the flowering of “new monasticism” and “intentional communities.”
If, as I have said, the fullness of the Church’s life requires a group of people set apart from “working life,” then I wonder if we ought to be trying to test whether new monastic and intentional communities could serve an analogous function as the religous within our parish structures. Maybe there would be only a few single parishes that could support such a group, but would it not be possible to imagine a relatively close group of parishes contribute together to support such a community for the sake of their own life? I don’t see why not. In fact I think this could be quite life-giving.
There are more than a few logistical questions that arise, but I have some ideas, and I imagine many others have some too. This is a topic I’d love to explore more here. So let’s tentatively consider this an ‘introductory’ post that could flower into more. These also could see some strong overlap with my continuing reflections on seminaries.
Hugh Latimer (1485-1555): Prayer and the Common Good
May 19, 2011
This quote is snatched from the blissful Love’s Redeeming Work: The Anglican Quest for Holiness, 17-18. Taken from a sermon on the Lord’s Prayer, using the Vulgate as the base text.
“He saith not ‘my,’ but ‘our.’ Wherefore saith ‘our?’ This word ‘our’ teacheth us to consider that the Father of heaven is a common Father; as well my neighbor’s Father as mine; as well the poor man’s Father as the rich: so that he is not a peculiar Father, but a Father to the whole church and congregation, to all the faithful. Be they never so poor, so vile, so foul and despised, yet he is their Father as well as mine: and therefore I should not despise them…Here may we perceive what communion is between us; so that when I pray, I pray not for myself alone, but for all the rest: again, when they pray, they pray not for themselves only, but for me: for Christ hath so framed this prayer, that I must needs include my neighbour in it…
I desire God to comfort all men living, but specially domesticos fidei…Yet we ought to prayer with all our hearts for the other, which believe not, that God will turn their hearts and renew them with his Spirit; yea, our prayers reach so farthat our very capital enemy ought not to be omitted.
Now to make an end: we are monished here of charity, and taught that God is not only a private Father, but a common Father unto the whole world, unto all faithful;…Where we may learn humility and lowliness: specially great and rich men shall learn here not to be lofty or to despise the poor. For when ye despise the poor miserable man, whom despise ye? Ye despise him which calleth God his Father as well as you; and peradventure more acceptable and more regarded in his sight than you be….But there be a great many which little regard this: they think themselves better than other men be, and so despise and contemn the poor; insomuch that they will not hear poor men’s causes, nor defend them from wrong and oppression of the rich and mighty. Such proud men despise the Lord’s prayer: they should be as careful for their brethren as for themselves. And such humility, such love and carefulness towareds our neighbours, we learn by this word ‘Our.’”
Speaking of Orchards: On Church Planting
May 15, 2011
A friend of the blog and blogger himself, Rev. Josh Rowley, is in the process of starting a new ‘missional community’ for the Presbyterians, and he recently posted a quote by H. Stanley Wood in his Extraordinary Leaders in Extraordinary Times (p. 152-153)
“A way forward for new-church development in denominations that value the connecting tissue of their congregations and judicatory structures might be to aid existing churches to start new churches, including the sending of ‘home-grown’ leadership to be NCD pastors”
As it happens I was just about to post something on this very topic. My diocese of Minnesota was started by one of our great missionary bishops, the Rt. Rev. Henry Benjamin Whipple. In large part because of his efforts, Minnesota has a very strong Episcopal presence relative to most other states in between the coasts. Besides saving hundreds of Sioux who were due to be unjustly executed by appeal to Pres. Abraham Lincoln, it is said that he once floated an entire church building down a river in order to plant it downstream. If you are ever in Minnesota, do go venerate his tomb underneath the Cathedral of our Merciful Savior in Fairbault. Which, as it happens, was the parish I was confirmed in.
We are all aware of the myriad of opinions there are as to why the Mainline is shrinking so rapidly, and we shall save such speculation for another day. At the very least it must be admitted that we lack the same zeal for planting new churches that Pentecostal and evangelical churches do. While the new multi-site campus style of growth is an anti-charismatic personality cult, and is therefore to be scorned in every way, what some evangelical churches often do is have thriving congregations put resources into starting new parishes, often sending clergy and lay people to aid.
To the extent that we even do plant new churches, the Mainline tends to do so in ways that are extraordinarily expensive, centralized, slow, and conservative. And if we’re honest, we don’t naturally put effort into evangelizing immigrant populations. (Though we’ve had some great opportunities with Hmong and Karen immigrants here. We’re slowly translating a prayer book into the language of the Hmong after a several hundred Hmong Roman Catholics sought to become Episcopalians, and the first parish I attended, Messiah in St. Paul, has successfully integrated a substantial Karen refugee group.)
Now I don’t want to suggest we go around our diocese’ at all, but there is no reason that a diocese could not encourage this kind of planting and even give aid to those congregations who would do so. Does anyone know of any diocese’ or parishes in particular that are doing this sort of thing? There are many avenues that could be explored for fundraising but this seems like one of the more successful and generally healthy kinds.
Tony Hunt
jstambaugh
Shawn Wamsley
