Lessons From A Catholic Missionary

Vincent Donovan was a Catholic missionary in Africa in the mid 1900s.  In his mission work he struggled with his missionary calling and through these struggles he discovered that if there was going to be any discipleship among the indigenous people of Africa new ideas of church and mission were going to have to be imagined. 

 

During the 1950s and 60s the Catholic priests serving in Masai, Africa built and equipped four schools and a hospital, purchased and upgraded a car to run community errands, attended kraals and drank milk and honey beer (sounds good) – and all this was going on for years.  But now read the letter that Donovan wrote in May 1966 to his bishop:

But never, or almost never, is religion mentioned on any of these visits.  The best way to describe realistically the state of this Christian mission is the number zero.  As of this month, in the seventh year of this mission’s existence, there are no adult Masai practicing Christians from Loliondo mission.  The only practicing Christians are the catechist and the hospital medical dresser, who have come here from other sections of Masailand.

 

That zero is a real number, because up until this date no Catholic child, on leaving school, has continued to practice his religion, and there is no indication that any of the present students will do so.

 

Later on in the letter Donovan would continue, “I suddenly feel the urgent need to cast aside all theories and discussions, all efforts at strategy – and simply go to these people and do the work among them for which I came to Africa.”[1]

 

What fascinates me about what Donovan is saying is that he needs to abandon all theories and discussions.  In his context this means abandoning the idea of building schools, hospitals and attending the social events.  Lamin Sanneh, who writes about this event says that Donovan is even going to have transgress hallowed boundaries, including ideas of church.

 

As I look at what Churches of Christ are doing in Ontario it seems that Donovan’s words can set us free.  We need to be free from the theories and discussions of how to do and be church for these theories and discussions are only hindering and hampering us.  These theories and discussions are not creating disciples in fact an alarming number of young people are leaving our heritage.  Our theories and discussions are not allowing us to discover the neighborhoods around the churches nor are they equipping us to serve the indigenous people.  In fact what the theories and discussions are forcing us to be and do is to remain a Southern US Church of Christ from the 1950s and 60s.  We need to quit discussing amongst ourselves how our current structures can remain in tact and do as Donovan says, “Simply go to these people and do the work for which [we are called].”

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[1] Lamin Sanneh, Disciples of All Nations (Oxford, 2008), 236.

Ministry Initiatives

Scott Frederickson says,

The question is never whether a congregation can offer a specialized ministry of one kind or another, but whether a congregation offers those ministries out of the core of who God has created it to be in its particular context.[1]

 

Our church has begun two initiatives to serve our neighborhood.  We have entered into dialogue with our neighbors living in the condominiums and through these conversations we have begun a community garden on the property of the church.  The garden boxes have been built and are waiting for the topsoil to be delivered.  The second initiative involves working with the public school in our neighborhood.  In conversations with the school we learned about too many kids going hungry everyday and so we started making lunches.  Each week our church makes 32 sandwiches and the school is responsible for giving hungry kids these lunches. 

 

These initiatives are certainly specialized to some degree and have arisen out of conversations with the neighborhood.  Yet I sometimes question whether or not we are involved in these ministry initiatives for the mere fact that we hope our church will grow numerically.  Should we not instead be involved in these ministries because God has created us to be his presence in this world?  Should we not instead be involved in these ministries because God has commissioned us to be participants with him extending his redemption to the broken?  Should we not instead be involved in these ministries because God has created us to be his hands and feet?

 

Right now I am thinking that I don’t want to be part of a ministry initiative for the mere reason that this will grow us numerically.  Instead I want to be a part of a ministry initiative because I have this deep understanding that what I/we are doing is rooted in what God is doing in and through us and what God is creating us to be.

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[1] Scott Frederickson, “The Missional Congregation In Context,” in The Missional Church in Context, ed., Craig Van Gelder (Eerdmans, 2007), 60.

Shifts Taking Place in the Church

The following is taken from Peter L. Steinke, Congregational In Anxious Times (Alban, 2006), 75.

 

 

Interesting shifts affecting congregations include:

• People are less interested in an intellectual approach to faith and increasingly drawn to an experience of faith.
• Authority in the congregation is shifting from vertical dimension (top-down) to the horizontal structure (network, teams).
• People are attracted to churches that offer certainty more than to churches that offer information or knowledge.
• The visual is replacing the verbal as a major revenue for communicating the message the church wants to convey.

Churches of Christ & Ecclesiology

Has our movement’s ecclesiology changed over the years to one specific ecclesiology or are there several competing against one another? 

Thomas Olbricht has an excellent article in the most recent Restoration Quarterly journal (2008, vol. 50.1) in which he outlines the varying views of what “church” has largely been thought of throughout our movement’s history.  As I look at Churches of Christ, and more specifically Churches of Christ in Ontario I believe I can confidently say we have several churches operating under an ecclesiology that has largely been shaped by Roy E. Cogdill and Leroy Brownlow.  Yet, Everett Ferguson’s ecclesiology has made significant impacts on our heritage in Ontario as is evident with his invitation to teach short courses at Great Lakes Bible College in Waterloo, ON. 

As I lead the Newmarket Church of Christ I am leading us down a new path which operates under a new ecclesiology.  This new ecclesiology is not based upon the teachings of the apostle Paul but instead is based upon the person and work of Jesus Christ.  Thus my ecclesiology is being developed on the teachings and actions of Jesus.  What else is influencing my ecclesiology? The notion of being a covenant people.  I suppose then that the words of Rubel Shelly and Randy Harris come in to play at this point, “We . . . propose a shift from institution to person, pattern to principle, deed to motivation.”  Our ecclesiology is not about “restoring the true church” but rather is about living in such a way so that we can be the body of Christ in this world. 

 As the community of faith I serve is struggling with the notion of moving out into the community to be the presence of Jesus we are inadvertently taking on a new ecclesiology.  What we are saying is that we are not interested in simply proclaiming “We have the right pattern” but instead come and journey with us as we realign our lives so that we become like the living Jesus . . . so that we become the presence of the living Jesus.

“Identification for Incorporation”

I am living with the book, A Community Called Atonement.  I have been strengthened and challenged in my thinking of what atonement is and what atonement accomplishes. 

Towards the end of the book McKnight (to use a phrase of McKnight’s) develops a bag that is able to hold all the metaphorical clubs of atonement.  Atonement is not just being atoned for our sins; “atonement is identification for incorporation (pg. 107).  McKnight wants us to understand that Jesus has died for us so that his life might become our life.

 

If McKnight is right that we are atoned “so that his life can become our life” then our churches will look drastically different than what they are today.  No longer will we be individually focused, no longer will be delivering hell, fire and brimstone sermons and then forgetting to tell “the sinners” what kind of life they are to live.  Instead we will become vessels in which the world sees God and what God is about.  We will find churches intentionally incorporating practices that bear witness to God’s love, peace and justice.  We will see churches participating in the work of God and becoming “the neighborhood church” rather than asking the neighborhood to come across the street to “our church.”  To quote McKnight,

In the rest of the book there is no attempt to be comprehensive or exhaustive about what a missional praxis of atonement looks like.  At rock-bottom reality each community will work out its own praxis of atonement, and that praxis will have a different shape and orientation in each community.  The central question of a missional praxis is this: “How can we help?”  This central question springs from a desire to go out into the community rather than an overwhelming desire to have the community come to the local church (pg. 118).

A Community Called Atonement

When are there moments of atonement?  Is the cross the only means of atonement?  Is the atonement simply being forgiven, redeemed, restored from our (individual) sin or is there a macrocosmic scope to the atonement?  Several chapters of McKnight’s book are dedicated to those moments of atonement where God redeems us from the problem of evil and sin.  Below are four moments of atonement and some quotes that I find very thought provoking.

 Atoning Moments: Incarnation As Second Adam

“God identifies with us in the incarnation.  Without identification, without incarnation, there is no atonement.  Which is to say that the atonement is an ontological act – God’s sharing our nature and our sharing God’s – at its core: it is about God identifying with us so that we might participate in God (2 Pet. 1:4)” (pg. 54).

Atoning Moments: Crucifixion

“I suggest that we see the achievement of the cross in three expressions: Jesus dies ‘with us’ – entering into our evil and our sin and our suffering to subvert it and create a new way; Jesus dies ‘instead of us’ – he enters into our sin, our wrath, and our death; and Jesus dies ‘for us’ – his death forgives our sin, ‘declares us right,’ absorbs the wrath of God against us, and creates new life where there was once only death.

Not only is this death saving, this same death becomes the paradigm for an entirely new existence that is shaped, as Luther said of theology and life, by the cross.  A life shaped by the cross is a life bent on dying daily to self in order to love God, self, others, and the world.  And a life shaped by the cross sees in the cross God becoming the victim, identifying with the victim, suffering injustice, and shaping a cruciform pattern of life for all who would follow Jesus.  The cross reshapes all of life” (pg. 69).

 Atoning Moments: Easter

“When, then, is the resurrection all about?  If the death of Christ wipes away sin, the resurrection of Christ makes all things new.  Resurrection is about new creation.  A theory of atonement that does not flow into the resurrection is an atonement that rids one of the sin problem but does not transform life and this world.  Stopping that flow of life from God into God’s people is the abortion of full atonement” (Pg. 70). 

 Atoning Moments: Pentecost

“Pentecost is both justification and judgment.  In this one act at Pentecost (1) the people of God, in God’s act of justifying and making his judgment clear, receive the power of the Holy Spirit to create a community wherein the will of God can be done, and (2) that new community creation is at the same time a judgment on the unjust rulers of this world” (pg. 76).

A Community Called Atonement

I’m living with Scott McKnight’s book, “A Community Called Atonement.”  Here are some of the things McKnight is saying in the first few chapters.

Where do we begin?  What does the atonement atone us from and what does it make us?  One cannot start with a single theory or in a single location for the atonement.  The atonement must begin somewhere but this somewhere encompasses many areas.  But first the atonement must start with Jesus. 

The atonement creates the kingdom of God.  The kingdom of God is “what God is doing in this world through the community of faith for the redemptive plans of God – including what God is doing in you and me” (pg. 9).  From here we are introduced to Luke’s gospel and how the kingdom of God is seen and experienced with the poor receiving justice, the blind receiving sight, the lame being able to walk again, etc.  The kingdom of God continues to be seen in the book of Acts when the early church continued to be empowered by the Spirit of God so that there would be equality, justice, and fellowship – the very things Jesus inaugurated and we are left with the idea that the kingdom of God continues to be seen and experienced through his people when they too practice equality, justice and fellowship.  Thus, the atonement creates the kingdom of God. 

Where else do we begin?  McKnight suggests we also start back at Genesis 1-2.  Our image (eikons) was distorted with sin and the atonement restores our image.  With this restoring we are now called to be in union with God, in community with other “eikons” and to be partners with God.  To read Genesis 1-2 through an atonement set of eyes is refreshing yet challenging.

The atonement also creates us into a worshipping community which can be classified as ambassadors of God.  As we become a community we become God’s representatives of what eternity is and will be.  We thus become performers of the gospel. 

To finish this section I quote McKnight,

Atonement is not just something done to us and for us, it is something we participate in – in this world, in the here and now.  It is not just something done, but something that is being done and something we do as we join God in the missio Dei (30-31).

 

A Community Called Atonement

Over the next several blogs I will highlight and interact with Scot McKnight’s book, A Community Called Atonement.

The atonement of Jesus must change us!  Yet as McKnight says, “The bad news, the anti-gospel as it were, is that the claim Christians make for the atonement is not making enough difference in the real lives of enough Christians.”  Ouch! 

If Jesus has atoned us of our sins what then does this mean?  How does this translate into our daily lives?  How does this translate how we be and do church?  How does this translate as we interact with the stranger on the street?  How does this translate as we interact with our own family (sometimes estranged family)?  Unfortunately, as McKnight points out, it hasn’t translated into much and the most glaring example is how we still have segregated churches. 

God atoned our sins and with this restored our relationship with him, with others, with self, and with the world.  Now that we are atoned we must live different lives and participate with God in redeeming this world.

A Short History of Hospitality

I’ve been reading Christine Pohl’s book on hospitality.  Below are some words and thoughts about hospitality. 

 

To talk about the history of hospitality is to talk about the location of hospitality.  The location of hospitality always includes space where people are welcomed.  In several biblical and non-biblical instances the place where people were welcomed was the home.  As we look at the OT scriptures we see that the home became a place where people were welcomed.[1]  In the NT the household also became a central place where people were welcomed.[2]

During the fourth and fifth centuries hospitality changed and this was due mainly in part to Christianity moving from a persecuted sect to a recognized religion by the Roman government.  It was during this time that hostels provided care for strangers, hospitals were established and monasteries welcomed various travelers.  In A.D. 362 the Emperor Julian, in an attempt to reestablish Hellenic religion, instructed the high priest of the Hellenic faith to imitate Christian concern for the strangers.  Julian wrote, “Why do we not observe that it is their benevolence to strangers, their care for the graves of the dead and the pretended holiness of their lives that have done most to increase atheism?”  [Atheism in this context refers to Christianity].  Julian would continue,

For it is disgraceful that, when no Jew ever has to beg and the impious Galilaeans [Christians] support not only their own poor but ours as well, all men see that our people lack aid from us.  Teach those of the Hellenic faith to contribute to public service of this sort.[3]

During the fourth century the first hospital was established.  After many years these hospitals became separate institutions to care for the various needs people (orphans, widows, strangers, sick and the poor) would have or encounter.  According to Pohl the first hospital to receive considerable mention in historical writings is the hospital built and founded by Basil, bishop of Caesarea in 370.  During a severe famine and in response to this famine Basil gathered the victims of the famine and what food he was able to collect and supplied the poor and hungry with food to eat and also provided for the physical ailments.  Shortly after this Basil established several institutions to provide care for the sick. 

 As we have looked briefly at the history of hospitality we have seen that hospitality has moved away from the home (as seen in the Biblical writings) to places of institution.  This of course brought with it an unfortunate manner.  Hospitality became not something that we as individuals do but something that the church as a whole should do.  Thus it was easy for churches to offer hospitality and inadvertently allow individuals not to practice or maintain the practice of hospitality.  Recognizing this John Chrysostom began to again remind and teach the church that even though the church as a whole practiced offering hospitality it did not exclude the individual from offering hospitality.  Chrysostom asked, “If another man prays, does it follow that you are not bound to pray?”  Chrysostom urged the people of the church to build a guest chamber in their own home so that they too could practice hospitality.[4]

As I look at this short history of hospitality I wonder what hospitality might look like in our churches.  I wonder how our churches can create places of welcome.  I wonder how our homes can become places of welcome.  Hospitality is not a good habit, it is essential to living the Christian faith.  May God help us become hospitable people.

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[1] See Gen 18-19; Josh. 2; 1 Sam. 25; 1 Kings 17:8-24; 2 Kings 4:8-37.

[2] See Acts 2:43-47; 9:42-10:48; 16:14-15; 18:1-11.

[3] Christine Pohl, Making Room, 44.

[4] Ibid., 45.

Christmas 2007

If I could figure out how to upload a picture or two I would show you what we as a church have done this year.  We provided over 20 families with a Christmas this year.  These families are our neighbors who live less than 2 miles from our building.  It was a blessing to be able to see the faces of the teachers at the local school when we dropped the gifts off for the families.  In case your wondering we partnered with the school in our neighborhood because they have a better read on different family situations.

Last night we had our annual Christmas party.  Instead of inviting our sister churches I focused heavily on our neighborhood.  We had several neighbors come and join us for an evening of Christmas caroling and refreshments.  One of the comments I heard was that, “You are normal!”  Wow, I really wonder what misconceptions are out there about us. 

My prayer is that God will continue to empower us to serve our neighborhood so that we can be his hands and feet as we invite people to become disciples of Jesus so that they too can enter into the reign of God.