Being Consumed

On the weekend I had a chance to get back into Cavanaugh’s Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire. The blurb from CBD reads:“Should Christians be for or against the free market? For or against globalization? How are we to live in a world of scarcity? William Cavanaugh uses Christian resources to incisively address basic economic matters—the free market, consumer culture, globalization, and scarcity—arguing that we should not just accept these as givens but should instead change the terms of the debate.

“Among other things, Cavanaugh discusses how God, in the Eucharist, forms us to consume and be consumed rightly. Examining pathologies of desire in contemporary “free market” economies, Being Consumed puts forth a positive and inspiring vision of how the body of Christ can engage in economic alternatives. At every turn, Cavanaugh illustrates his theological analysis with concrete examples of Christian economic practices.”

The chapters are 1) Freedom and Unfreedom; 2)  Detachment and Attachment; 3) The Global and the Local; 4) Scarcity and Abundance.
Cavanaugh uses Augustine to address the concept of “freedom” and “desire” and he uses Augustine critically. He is both lucid and complex. I was reading along closely until I came to page nine. He writes,

Synchroblog - What Missional is not..

A few weeks ago the Blind Beggar threw out a general invitation to bloggers interested in preserving the integrity of the word “missional.” The synchroblog list follows at the end of this entry.

As I pondered on what to say on “what is missional,” I decided to use the lens of pastoral theology. So much of what we are and do is shaped by our own need: need to see the impact of our actions; need to be relevant; need to be understood; need to be loved. But God’s goodness flows from a different place. I will speak of mission from John 15:4-6 and then talk about two movements that masquerade as missional.

I am going to sing to the Lord God Yahweh as long as I live!
I am going to serenade my God with music as long as I am here!
May my poetry make him happy..

–I, at least, am going to be happy and enjoy it with Him,
the covenanting One!     Ps.104 30,31

I’ve been known to whirl and spin my way across the living room. It’s one of those things I don’t advertise. I take a page from Carolyn Arends, “dance when no one’s watching.. nobody but You.”

Traveler’s Guide II

See the earlier post for some background discussion based on Tom Sine (The New Conspirators) and David Dunbar’s Missional Journal.

After my first post I was left running a structural taxonomy in my head, so I scribbled it on paper last night. What this requires is some kind of consensus on essential characteristics of each stream. In some ways, this is like trying to describe a face. You know your brother-in-law when you see him, but if you didn’t know what he was wearing and he was average height and build, it would be difficult to offer a short list to a stranger to assist finding him in a crowd.

Ah well. Fortune favors the bold (and angels rush in…) Here goes. If we take the Missional conversation to be characterized by an emphasis on..

the Missio Dei
the Gospel of the kingdom
Leadership
Covenant Community…

And we take the Monastic movement to be characterized by

Vows
Place
the Poor
Prayer..

And we take the Emergent conversation to be characterized by

Place
Participation
the Arts/Mystery
Alternative/Subversive concerns…

Kansas City ATC Report

Allelon’s Summer Institute in Kansas City has just wrapped up, and some early reports from attendees are out. Mike King reports Mission-Shaped Groups and Missional Theology, saying,

I’m sitting in class with two dozen, mostly friends and associates, studying Missional Church Theology. Our instructors are Dr. John Franke from Biblical Seminary and Dr. Alan Roxburgh from Allelon and the Allelon Training Center. We are launching an ATC in Kansas City through Jacob’s Well. This is some amazing content and wonderful dialogue about what it means to cooperate with the Mission of God.
 
The reality is that being Missional is first and foremost about God. This is not the Churches Mission, it is God’s Mission missio dei. John Franke dealt with the most important question for those hoping to embrace a missional way of life, a missional church. The question is, “Who is God?” We focused on the Trinity and entered into a discussion on the Eastern view that God is social not solitary. God is love and God is radical sociality. The Trinity - God is one by virtue of their interdependent sociality. Alan states that it is essential to start with the “Who is God?” question instead of the common mistake of hyper-focusing first and almost exclusively on ecclesiology.
 
This conversation is compatible with Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s three questions (in order of priority): Who is Jesus Christ?; Where is Jesus Christ?; What then shall we do? Bonhoeffer says the “How question” (the important question for many fearful that this conversation is a “slippery slope”) is a question of doubt, a question of idolatry.

orders.. and more orders

Dan Steigerwald and I chatted on SKYPE on Monday morning for about 90 minutes, tossing some rule frameworks around and sharing knowledge and questions. The further along I travel in exploring this direction, the more questions I have.

Dan has also had a look at the ToM website, and chatted with some people involved. For both of us, looking around the material makes us tired. It seems overly complex and detailed. It’s as if every dimension of life has to be analyzed, plotted, and then integrated and diagrammed with spiritual practice.

We are asking a number of similar questions about missional orders and making some similar observations. Some rules are simple, some complex. Some seem to start from a devotional center and move outward (ToM); others seem to begin from a missional center then move inward (Northumbria). Some emphasize the rule as the center; some seem to use the rule to work at rhythm and relationships. Some seem more focused on process, others on the goal. Some seem to invite creative participation; others invite subscription. Some prescribe, others describe.

the primal vision

i have been in australia for two weeks and reflecting with a series of posts from there. one of them was on john taylor’s primal vision and goes like this…

on the plane on the way to australia i finally read john taylor’s book the primal vision. it was written 45 years ago in 1963 and is his attempt to map and respond to the tribal/primal cultures he encountered spending time travelling in africa. tim dakin, general secretary of cms in britain has been recommending it to me for several years! john taylor was a former general secretary of cms - i have referenced his book the go between god before now. well it turns out it is another wonderful mission text to fund the imagination albeit in very different contexts.

on monday i was invited to give three different presentations to people from the uniting church, many of whom were church leaders. so i decided to do one on the primal vision and see how it went down. i lifted a number of themes from the book and then asked what they might imply in our own contexts…

here are the ten points and accompanying quotes:

Missional, Emerging, Monastic: A Traveler’s Guide

Scot McKnight cues me to the latest edition of David Dunbar’s Missional Journal. David is not only the president of Biblical Seminary, he is also a voice in the missional conversation.Following others I distinguish the “missional” conversation from the emerging conversation (both Tom Sine’s recent work “The New Conspirators” and David’s journal article). It’s worth the read and you can find it HERE.

I’ll characterize the four conversations as Sine did, with four streams denoted by emerging, missional, monastic and mosaic (Find Andrew Perrimann’s summary of Sine’s work HERE). It’s even more interesting to observe the convergence of these energies, all birthed by the Holy Spirit. Each brings their own renewal dynamic to the broader church, and I’m convinced that the convergence zone is where some of the most creative experiments will occur. Convergence is evident in places like Life on the Vine, where monastic is meeting missional and emergent, or in kingdom initiatives like ALLELON, where a similar dynamic is at work.

“Experiments,” you say, “the Church of Jesus Christ is never an experiment.” Elizabeth O’Connor writes,

“We would say that the church of Christ is never an experiment, but wherever that church is true to its mission it will be experimenting, pioneering, blazing new paths, seeking how to speak the reconciling Word of God to its own age. It cannot do this if it is held captive by the structures of another day or is slave to its own structures…” (Call to Commitment, 1963)

Next Page »