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.
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.
If I Had An Orchard
May 13, 2011
The Fleet Foxes are a wildly popular band within certain circles, but if you’ve never heard of them that doesn’t surprise me. They are arguably one of the country’s most popular “indy” bands—which is somewhat of a oxymoron if you think about it.
However, Fleet Foxes are a band of contradictions. The two core members grew up in a wealthy suburb of Seattle yet they sing about places like the Blue Ridge Mountains and idealize the simplicity of rural life. The band gained notoriety playing folk music but their most recent release seems to channel a bit of 60’s rock, Simon and Garfunkel-type stuff. They have a mountain-man, flannel sort of look but the Fleet Foxes are most popular with urban hipsters and Europeans.
Below is a new song of theirs that has intrigued me since it’s release. The lyrics (as best as I can tell) are posted below. I’ve bolded the bits that seem interesting to me.
I was raised up believing I was somehow unique
Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes, unique in each way you can see
And now after some thinking, I’d say I’d rather be
A functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond meBut I don’t, I don’t know what that will be
I’ll get back to you someday soon you will seeWhat’s my name, what’s my station, oh, just tell me what I should do
I don’t need to be kind to the armies of night that would do such injustice to you
Or bow down and be grateful and say “sure, take all that you see”
To the men who move only in dimly-lit halls and determine my future for meAnd I don’t, I don’t know who to believe
I’ll get back to you someday soon you will seeIf I know only one thing, it’s that everything that I see
Of the world outside is so inconceivable often I barely can speak
Yeah I’m tongue-tied and dizzy and I can’t keep it to myself
What good is it to sing helplessness blues, why should I wait for anyone else?And I know, I know you will keep me on the shelf
I’ll come back to you someday soon myselfIf I had an orchard, I’d work till I’m raw
If I had an orchard, I’d work till I’m sore
And you would wait tables and soon run the storeGold hair in the sunlight, my light in the dawn
If I had an orchard, I’d work till I’m sore
If I had an orchard, I’d work till I’m sore
Someday I’ll be like the man on the screen
The singer’s attitude (as I interpret it) is one that resonates with me and, I believe, many of my generation. We grew up being told that we could accomplish anything that we set our mind to. We were told that we were special and destined for great things. More so then any American generation before us, we were pampered, protected, praised and pushed to insure we could reach our highest potential.
Unfortunately, while we were given many tools, we were not told what to build.
Consequently many of us have sobered as we’ve entered adulthood, wondering “just who we should be.” I find it ironic that a chief mouthpiece of the ‘me’ generation would long for being a “cog in some great machinery” provided that he served “something beyond me.” I wonder how many tattooed, independently-minded, 20-somethings out there are secretly asking the same thing.
Where is the Orchard that the poet longs for? Where is the idealistic cause that’s worth believing in whole heartedly?
Christians believe that we’ve found something worth living for in the death and resurrection of Christ. It’s the story of the renewal of all things. More than anything else, this is the most scandalous thing that Christians believe—that this Jesus who died and rose again is the purest expression of what it means to be alive.
Mainline Protestans in particular are notorious for encouraging young people to find their own way. Perhaps we should reconsider whether or not young people wish to be constantly building their own meaning. Maybe it’s time we be more confident in the orchard that we’ve found in Christ. I’ll admit that there is a fine line between tying someone to your boat versus leaving them to float home alone. My friends know I am not one to quickly embrace someone else’s inexorable dogma. But at the same time, I hope that if anyone ever asked me, “what’s my name, what’s my function?” I could give them an answer worth believing in.
NOTE: This post is based on a sermon I preached on the Third Sunday of Easter, 2011
A Sermon for the Second Sunday of Easter
May 2, 2011
Here is the homily I delivered this last Sunday at St. John’s Cathedral – for those morbidly interested in such things. Sometimes the church posts audio on its web page – if so, I’ll update with a link.
O’ Lord, help us to hear your Spirit in our hearts, though our ears listen to human words; give us the humility to obey your word and the strength to perform your will. Amen.
My first real crisis of faith came to a head in the passenger seat of a Saturn SL nearly twelve years ago. My tour of duty in Bible College was nearing its end, and a series of negative experiences had sent me into an existential tail spin. I had long been at odds with the particulars of life as an ultra-conservative Evangelical, but as is often the case; it was an untimely death that had me questioning the basic assumptions of life and faith. Its funny how life’s biggest questions are the easiest to ignore when things are going well, and how those questions fight their way to the surface of our lives when we ignore them for too long.
And, so, as I argued with a friend in the car that evening about such lofty questions as the problem of evil and the weaknesses of Anselm’s ontological argument; I waxed eloquent, building the best case against the existence of God that my burgeoning education could muster. After an extended period of such ranting that close friend, who was sitting in the driver’s side seat, gently corrected me with an unexpected response. It was the very response that Jesus gave to Thomas in this morning’s Gospel reading. My friend, Jeremiah, actually had the audacity to reply to my argument by saying, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
That response was so unexpected that my rhythm was broken and my ranting stuttered to a stop. I stared at him in stunned silence as the words he spoke sank in, and rage began to boil up in my heart and spill out of my mouth. I was, I thought, building a case against God that even Job would be proud of, and here was Jeremiah suggesting that I was blessed, – blessed! -because I, unlike Thomas the Apostle, had little to no hope of ever experiencing God in such a tangible way.
I wasn’t angry, because the statement was painfully true (though, it was) or because the statement contained some kind of parochial wisdom that flew in the face of my highly sophisticated and philosophically secular doubt (though, it surely did). I was angry, because those words, first spoken by Jesus, carried the same indictment that he directed at the Pharisees earlier in his ministry. In that moment of indignation, I imagine I felt like the Pharisees must have when Jesus told them that it is a wicked and adulterous generation that seeks a sign. I was angry, because like the Pharisees, I sought to apprehend truth on my own terms – to possess it like a piece of personal property, to manipulate it, to make it do my bidding. I wanted to have a relationship with God that was based on my own knowledge, where he made displays of his existence and of his power at my whim for my comfort and for my peace of mind.
While all of us have undoubtedly struggled with the existence of God or the reality of Jesus’ presence in our own lives, I would never suggest that everyone here has doubts for the same reasons that I do. Let’s be honest, though, who here has not fantasized about how much better we would be as Christians, if only Jesus would just show up in the flesh at our bedside some evening? But, of course, just as the issue was never a simple matter of intellectual certainty on my part, the interaction between Thomas and Jesus in the twentieth chapter of John’s Gospel in not simply a matter of establishing empirical evidence for the bodily resurrection. While doubt may plague us, and may at times seem insurmountable, we would be foolish to assume that doubt is not also pervasive in every other area of our lives. We would also be foolish to believe that the real danger of doubt is found in the potential that something or someone does not exist as we believe, rather than in the clear fact that if we submit to belief then we must also act accordingly. If we accept something as truth, as corresponding to reality as it really exists, then we must also be compelled to adjust the way we live in relationship to that reality. My drive home after church this morning will look quite a bit different if I develop a sudden and healthy skepticism for either traffic laws or the laws of physics.
As a simple demonstration of my point, you don’t have to go far in the Gospels to find disbelief. Indeed, the Gospel narratives are riddled with religious folk, simple folk, military folk, educated folk, well every kind of folk really who just cannot seem to understand what Jesus is up to. In the light of the overwhelming disbelief that was pointed in Jesus’ direction, I have often felt rather sorry for the Apostle Thomas and his nom de guerre, that dubious title of “doubter,” that wicked schoolyard taunt that “one of these things is not like the other.” When, in fact, he fit right in with the other Apostles in dismissing the report that Jesus had risen from the dead. I am sure the other Apostles are merely biding their time before it catches on that they all dismissed the women who first returned with the report that the tomb was empty and Jesus was raised from the dead long before Thomas had a chance to shine as the savant of skepticism. Of course, if we had a nickel for every time a man foolishly dismissed the report of a woman…
Clearly faith and belief are an issue in as much as they allude to our trusting God. And to the degree that faith and belief are concerned with the resurrection, they are essential. The Apostle Paul ties the effectiveness of the atonement and our justification to the resurrection, proclaiming that if Christ has not been raised from the dead, then we above all others are to be pitied. We see in this morning’s Lesson from 1 Peter that the Apostle Peter ties our participation in a “living hope” to the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Last Sunday Bishop Vono identified our participation in the events of holy week and Paschal celebrations as a necessary “tune-up” to our faith. We can also see, then, that the Apostle John intends his Gospel to confront readers with the fact that God has initiated the process of reconciling creation back to himself through the work of the incarnate Word– but it is up to us to walk in the light, to shun the darkness, to embrace the reality of the resurrection. Faith, especially pertaining to the resurrection, is less about convincing yourself intellectually that a person might come back to life from death, and more about being resolute in your conviction that life lived in light of the resurrection looks much different than life outside of that reality.
Bishop N.T. Wright points out that for John’s Gospel the resurrection especially matters, because “John is a theologian of creation at heart. The Logos, the Word, who was always to be the point of convergence at which the creator and creation came together, is now, in the resurrection, the point at which the creator and the new creation are likewise one.” The living hope of which the Apostle Peter speaks is the reality that we are adopted into the family of God, because Jesus has been raised from the dead. Because Jesus is alive, we can be sons and daughters of the almighty. We see in Jesus’ appearances to his disciples after the resurrection not only a substantiation of his claims to be the Son of God, but also what must have been an initially startling realization on the part of his followers that they would now have to live into the reality of their citizenship in the Kingdom of God.
This brings me back to my story about my crisis of faith many years ago, and the wry question that Jesus leaves hanging thick in the air as he squares off with Thomas. Jesus asks Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me?” What is, perhaps, most telling about this interaction is the fact that even though Jesus immediately follows this question with his own confession that not all of his followers will have the opportunity to “see and believe” as Thomas does, he asks in response to Thomas’ pronouncement of him as “my Lord and my God.” This is significant, according to Wright, because Thomas has now become the spokesperson for the disciples in identifying what John has been compelling his readers to identify all along; “Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and through believing there is life in his name.” Certainly, there have been many biblical scholars that have written long lists of what different political, religious and socio-economic sects within Judaism expected to see when the Messiah returned. However, it wasn’t until Thomas’ proclamation that someone saw who the Messiah was in reality. Thomas saw God in human flesh, albeit a new kind of flesh recently returned from death, with his own human eyes. Where others had looked upon the same person and saw something completely different, Thomas now acknowledged the reality that Jesus and the Word were one and the same.
We may not have the opportunity to see Jesus in the flesh with our human eyes. My friend’s use of Jesus’ declaration that those who see with only the eyes of faith are blessed was undoubtedly an indication of how God speaks to us through each other. You see, though my initial reaction was one of anger, I was able eventually to recognize that my anger came from being exposed to the light. I didn’t have trouble believing that God exists or trouble believing the Gospel’s account of who Jesus is. I was having trouble believing in a God that existed as a construct within my mind. Faith in Christ through the resurrection is a matter of learning how to live in response to that reality, how to experience that living hope. Any attempt to filter that reality or to remake God in the flesh in our own image will necessarily produce a belief system that is riddled with doubt – one that cannot withstand scrutiny. And, so, it is my hope that we all determine in our own hearts to acknowledge the reality of who Jesus is and to submit our lives to the task of living in response to the reality of his resurrection.
Amen.
Mars Hill Church, Mark Driscoll, and Gender Roles
April 14, 2011
If you are a student of theology searching through sources that are immediately obvious (Mars Hill Church’s web page) and easily attainable (the publications of Pastor Mark Driscoll) concerning the theology of Mars Hill Church, you will find nothing surprising, nothing indecent, nothing “out of the ordinary.” This was, frankly, a little bit surprising, indecent, and unexpected to me. You see, much of my experience with Mars Hill Church, and Mark Driscoll by way of extension, is through those that attend services at a Mars Hill campus or through those that listen to Mark’s sermons. Without fail (no, really) these conversations always lead to a discussion regarding Mark’s theology on gender roles; particularly gender roles and how they are played out in the church and home. Now, admittedly, many of my more recent conversations have been driven by my own morbid curiosity concerning these issues. As such, I am the one that brings up the gender role “issue.” However, my most recent encounter with this theology comes via a concerned friend attending a Mars Hill Church.
I know I am late to this party. Bloggers have been bashing and defending Mark for years. The reason I enter the fray now is in order to faithfully walk with a friend in need. Consequently, though I am late, I wonder if two or three years after the brouhaha I am not seeing the practical incarnation of Mark’s theology in the lives of his parishioners. Still, it bears telling that after reading everything I could get my hands on for free and after watching what seemed like pertinent sermon archives on YouTube, I am mostly annoyed over how little I am actually annoyed by Mark’s writing and preaching when it comes to matters of orthodox theology. Sure, his tone is brash, his words are poorly chosen at times, and he mostly lacks theological finesse; but which of these things could not also be said of me? The lion’s share of his doctrinal writing is done in the style and quality of most reformed theology. So, after adjusting for things that I would personally not like to be nitpicked on, I am not left with a lot to attack.
Then there is the ministry niche he is filling. Mark has made his mark in the church market by bringing in the elusive 20-35 male crowd. He has published quite a bit of material directed toward discipling Christian men on how to be good husbands and fathers. How did he do it? Well, here is where most people have been fighting. Dr. Richard Beck of ACU has a very evenhanded approach to understanding the practical/pastoral theology of Mark Driscoll and why it makes waves in the broader Christian community. In short, Mark’s advocates claim that he has given men permission to be real men, and Mark’s detractors claim that he has created a haven for misogynists and their sympathizers. Dr. Beck’s blog (here and at the end of this post) answers with an eloquent “yes” on both counts.
Mark should be applauded for an attempt to bring genuine masculinity into an environment whose controlling narrative is fundamentally feminine and feminizing. Conversely, Mark’s teaching is not always accurate in depicting genuine masculinity. Instead, much of what Mark props up as complimentarian gender distinction finds its locus in misogyny. To borrow Dr. Beck’s words,
“I think this is because there is a great deal of confusion about what we mean by “masculine.” In psychology, the word “masculinity”, due to its gender overtones, has been largely replaced by the term “agency.” Agency/masculinity is associated with motives for control, power, independence, and dominance. These are, stereotypically, “masculine” traits, but women can be highly agentic as well. If agency means power, control, and dominance then it seems clear that “masculine” traits will struggle to find a place in the Christian ethic. This was precisely Nietzsche’s concern about Christianity: Christianity preaches a passive “slave ethic.””
Consequently, Mark is an “agentic” guy and he interprets his “agency” as genuine masculinity. So, what is the best way for Christian men to be genuinely masculine in the Christian sense? If you read Mark’s publications the answer is for men to exert control, power, independence, and dominance over their wives and children. Hmm, that sounds familiar. Where have we heard it before?
One more quote from Dr. Beck is helpful I think:
“I’ve {Dr. Beck} argued in Thought #1 and #2 that Driscoll should not be so easily dismissed. The question he’s raising–Why are males not more attracted to church?–is worth asking. And one of his diagnoses on this issue–Church leaders are chickified–has some merit to it.
But the dark side of Driscoll’s ministry is its chauvinism and misogyny. And this criticism is also valid for certain impulses one finds in the Christian men’s movements. Specifically, the assertion of masculinity implies a suppression of women and a restoration of male power over women. To be a “Christian man” means “reclaiming” and “taking back” leadership roles in both the family and the church. Men use spiritual warrant to assert power over women.”
The danger is when Mark uses biblical exegesis in that very “evangelical argumentum ad baculum” way to proof text gender roles that he superimposes on biblical texts. Why is this problematic? It is problematic, because this theology has created a normative expression of gender in the Mars Hill Community that cannot be contradicted, because of an appeal to Scriptural authority. If one does not meet the expectations of those normative gender roles, then one is looked down upon for not submitting to God. In short, if you are a member of Mars Hill Church and want to participate as a leader (even at the lowest rung) in discipleship or fellowship, then you cannot deviate from the established gender roles. If you want to lead a small group and you are a man, then you had better be fulfilling Mark’s vision of genuine masculinity – read dominant, controlling, and powerful. If you want your family to belong and you are a woman, then you had better be fulfilling Mark’s vision of genuine femininity – read submissive, controlled, and weak. So, what happens if it makes better sense for a family if the mother works and the father stays home to raise the children? You come up for “review” with the leadership of the church, that’s what. A man who will stay home with his children while his wife works comes under the same kind of scrutiny as a man who is cheating on his wife. It becomes a question of whether said man is “fit to lead.” This is justified, because, apparently, Mark’s Bible says so.
Exegetically, Mark takes too many liberties in 1) giving narrow definitions for terms that are either contextually or culturally bound in the text, and in 2) insisting that such notions be applied to the lives of Christians as if they were the actual theological principles found in the texts, and in 3) using wisdom literature as prescriptive rather than descriptive.
For an instance of #1 and #2, in this broadcast posted on YouTube, you can see the basic hermeneutical approach utilized by Mark and his wife. They use 1 Timothy 5:8 which says, “but a man that will not provide for his own and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith, and is worse than an unbeliever” as an injunction against both a father that would stay home and take care of his family in order for his wife to work, and as an injunction against a father that allows his wife to work outside of the home - at all. Mark even goes as far as to acknowledge that some have complained that he takes the Bible out of its cultural context, but does nothing to answer the criticism.
As far as 1 Timothy 5 is concerned, a larger issue than even the cultural expression of gender role is the fact that Paul is clearly not talking about “every man.” Paul is giving instruction to widows, their families, and their churches. Paul tells them that some of them are merely husbandless, and some of them are “true widows.” Those women who find themselves husbandless are to return to their parents. In which case, Paul explains that the parents of husbandless women that will not care for her have denied the faith and are worse than an unbeliever. Apparently, Timothy’s church was full of rich, heartless bastards that wouldn’t even take care of their widowed daughters, because it was easy to let the church community do it instead. This comes from only a simple reading of the whole text of Timothy. No fancy Greek translation, no obscure historical-cultural background. Mark Driscoll is superimposing what he wants the text to say onto a text that seems to fit the bill. I think we call that proof texting? In fact, if anyone would take the time to read it, I surmise that I could easily dismiss most of his readings in Ephesians 5, Colossians 3, 1 Peter 3, and Titus 2 on the basis of the same kind of sloppy hermeneutics.
For an instance of #3, in Pastor Dad he states that Proverbs 19:13 proves that the sorry state of modern families is due to the fact that women have undermined the authority of the husbands by “chirping” at them constantly and turning their children into ruinous fools by proxy. The verse says, “A foolish son is ruin to his father, and a wife’s quarreling is a continual dripping of rain.” I’m sure it is obvious to everyone how he came to those conclusions? Interestingly, this kind of exegesis is damaging to the actual principle at hand. Why can we not just appreciate the wisdom of Scripture in identifying the importance of harmony in the home? Why does this verse prove gender roles? Go ahead; replace any of the characters in the verse with another member of the family. For instance, what if son and father is replaced with daughter and mother – what if a wife’s quarreling is replaced with a husband’s quarreling? Does it change the theological principle? No. Does it change the verse’s utility as a proof text for gender roles? Uh-oh. Furthermore, and perhaps more problematic, why does Mark have to rely on Scripture’s wisdom literature in such a prescriptive manner for so much of his theological stance on gender roles?
What is ultimately the case, in my experience, is that only people who have the luxury of indulging their personal biases and living out their “ideal self” are ever so pedantic about moralizing issues like gender role. Sure, there are lots of chauvinist men out there that would have their wives in their proper place – the home; but how many of them earn Mark’s salary? Sure, there are lots of misogynists out there that think women are gullible and weaker than men, but how many of them are as charismatic as Mark? Mark has the ability to get away with this moralizing, because he is a successful mega-church pastor (and has been since a young age) and is untouched by the realities faced by young professionals, single parents and low-income families alike. This is, of course, a practical explanation of what ultimately originates from a need in the theological framework of most “conservative evangelical” narratives. Meaning this: sure Mark is reaching a historically hard to reach demographic, but he is reinforcing a historically negative social hierarchy based in gender bias. This negative bias is at the root of many patriarchal worldviews, and is defensible from arguments that rely on perspectives that in turn rely on traditionally fundamentalist understandings of Scriptural authority. What’s the cost? Real people, in real modern families, are once again begin taught to objectify women by men of the cloth. Kyrie Eleison.
Some of the interesting material I used preparing for the post
http://theresurgence.com/files/2011/03/02/relit_ebook_pastordad.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WPVxndUcHQ
http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2009/02/thoughts-on-mark-driscoll-while-im.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/magazine/11punk-t.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.cbmw.org/images/onlinebooks/rbmw.pdf
http://www.dennyburk.com/mark-driscoll-on-women-in-ministry-2/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-goldstein/whos-to-blame-for-pastor-_b_33279.html
Discernment for Holy Orders, Part 1
February 16, 2011
It’s been so long since I’ve last posted that I feel like an imposter here, but I’ve been told before that I harbor too much residual evangelical guilt.
After a time of further reflection on the part of myself and the leadership of my parish, and after a time of immersing myself in the ministry of said parish, I officially began meeting with a committee of parish lay persons and leaders last night. Deos Gratias! I can now call myself an aspirant for holy orders in the Episcopal church. I’m pretty excited, I must say; and a little freaked out. Nothing like a Grand Inquis…er…discernment committee coupled with a wife nearing the end of her first pregnancy (Miserere mei, Deus) to deeply unsettle a guy on an existential and emotional level (By the way, I blame my recent writer’s block on this unsettling [unsettlement?]).
The discernment committee, as the first step on a long road toward ordination, is composed of a group of women and men from my parish family, who were called by Fr. Goodman (the priest of my parish) to put my call under rigorous scrutiny. Last night, the Fr. Goodman emphasized that to allow me to proceed toward ordination as a priest if I was not truly called would not be doing me or my family any favors, and I couldn’t agree more. At the same time, of course, I want to be a priest (a fact that is still–a year and half after acknowledging a call from God–unsettling for me, and even troubling for some of my family). So, I suppose I will just have to see what happens.
O inscrutabilis Scrutator animarum, cui patet omne cor, si me vocaveras, olim a te fugeram. Si autem nunc velis vocare me indignum…
As a member of my generation stereotypically would, I got permission to blog about the whole process, so that is what I intend to do. My first two posts (which should appear before my next committee meeting which is at the end of March), will be:
a) to present a sort of bibliography of priestly/call-to-ministry books both fiction and non-fiction, with a call for suggestions on further reading,
and
b) to publish a spiritual autobiography (in entirety or excerpts), which is my homework, due before the next meeting.
Meanwhile, ora pro me (and correct my Latin, if needed).
Explorations in Mainline Campus Ministry
September 20, 2010
Well it happened like this. Sometimes blog contributor Reed Carlson had been attending St. Matthew’s Episcopal parish for a rather short amount of time but was quickly in an energetic relationship with our wonderful rector and her husband, from whom he had taken a class on Anglicanism at Luther Seminary. The Episcopal Church has some money set aside for grants for those brave enough to risk campus ministry. At the initiative of our rector, in a very very short amount of time, Reed and our friend Aaron composed a plan and vision for a campus ministry to be developed at St. Matt’s. We just so happen to be right on the border of the St. Paul campus of the University of Minnesota and quite near a fair number of other colleges in the area.
As it turned out, the Episcopal Church was excited enough by their proposals that we received a grant to fund the ministry! So in the matter of a few months Reed and several others organized and planned this new flowering ministry and as of a week ago we are up and running.
Via Media (who’da thunk it right?) is a gathering which takes place every Sunday evening. Starting at six we have a free communal meal – lord knows how we college folk love free food – and at seven we move to a simple service. One Sunday a month the service follows a Taize order, and the three others are an ever-so-slightly simplified Evensong, of which one includes a Eucharist. We are already a part of the various campus groups at the U of M and we even have a sign painted…as well as a Facebook page, and most importantly fancy website.
Now in our second week, we’ve already had multiple visitors.
It has been of upmost priority that this ‘ministry’ be one of the local parish and not a pseudo-para-church organization. We’ve gotten nothing but support from them and we are very thankful for it. The goal has been, not to portion off a specific age group – 20-30 yr olds – and ‘target’ them, but that this be a gateway into the larger multi-generational life of the parish.
Additionally it has been hoped that students will quickly become a part of the life of Via Media. Already a visitor from the first week has played guitar the second and we are hoping to encourage this kind of thing.
Having spent time cutting my teeth on both ‘Street’ and ‘Relational’ evangelism, this has drug all sorts of questions on missiology out for me; questions I hope in time to raise here and there on the blog.
For now, pray that we will be successful in bearing witness to the Gospel.
I wonder if any have had any experience doing this sort of thing. What were your experiences? What would you have done differently and what did you find worked well? Given that we have for a long time as the Episcopal Church relied on our cultural inheritance to the expense sometimes of evangelism, in what ways might we learn to become a missional church?
Tony Hunt
jstambaugh
Shawn Wamsley
