Tim Keller’s Google Talk

Tim Keller’s talk at Google, according to one audience member, drew a crowd larger than any other, the next most popular talk being that of Violet Blue, the Sex Blogger, whose audience filled the lecture hall only half as full.Here’s the talk. More comments later after I get a chance to go over it a few times.

Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day…

Patricius was born in Britain, but raised as a citizen of Rome. The dates of his life are commonly held as somewhere from AD 376- 458.[1] Patrick was captured as a youth by Irish raiders and taken to Ireland as a slave, where he was forced to herd sheep and work as a domestic servant and farm hand. Though born in a Christian home, Patrick was not a pious young man. During his captivity, however, he began to pray to God and grew to be a passionate believer. According to his Confession, Patrick received a dream in which God told him, “behold, your ship awaits,” and Patrick managed to escape and find his way home to England.[2]

Patrick departed to go to Rome, but stopped in Auxerre in Gaul, where he met and placed himself under the tutelage of Bishop Germanus. He studied under Germanus for decades, and was himself consecrated as a bishop either by Amathorex or Germanus himself.[3] In his forties, Patrick returned to Ireland to take the gospel to his former captors. His mission was one of the first to go beyond the contiguous borders of Roman dominion.

Patrick’s missionary methodology was to engage the local king or tribal chieftain in hope of their conversion or at least their clearance. If he obtained permission, he would camp near a settlement with his apostolic (here the word is synonymous with missionary) team and meet with people, seeking those who seemed receptive.

George Hunter describes the development of a local faith community. Patrick and his team would pray for the sick and provide counseling, pray for good fishing, and engage in open-air speaking which probably included telling Bible stories, singing songs, or even drama. Through friends and family members, the little band of believers would grow as a ministering community of faith within the local tribe. If God blessed these efforts over time, a church would result, and the people and the apostolic band would build a chapel. The resulting church within the tribe would have been astonishingly indigenous.[4]

Hunter’s description of the church movement that spread from Patrick’s mission is a community very different from the Roman church. Just as Ireland was outside of Rome’s imperial dominion, the Celtic Christian community was outside of the Roman church’s ability to shape and control, and the so the church that grew and flourished in the soil of Ireland took on its own shape, a movement more than an institution, with more participation from laity and less from clergy. Patrick had founded a church which broke the Roman mold and was both catholic and barbarian.[5]

Celtic Christianity would be criticized and wondered at, but the missionaries who spread from the beginning Patrick had made would evangelize the painted Picts in Caledonia (now Scotland) and set up monastic communities that preserved the Western canon of literature in their scriptoria after Rome was sacked.[6]

The signal achievement of Patrick was no less important than that of Ulfilas (Ulfilas, an Arian, evangelized the Goths, wrote an alphabet for them and translated the Scriptures, arguably the earliest known example of contextualization). Part of the latter’s genius was in recognizing the reality that the Scriptures needed to be expressed in the language of the people to whom they were brought – linguistic indigenization. Patrick’s brilliance was no less significant – one of his contributions was the realization of the principle that Christianity does not exist in the abstract, but is always instantiated among real people in some real cultural context. This means that there is no such thing as biblical Christianity in the abstract, but there can be a whole host of authentic, culturally indigenous, biblically faithful expressions of Christianity. Patrick realized there was nothing particularly holy about the Roman way of doing church, its organization, architecture, modes of dress, even hairstyles. One could diverge widely from all of those cultural norms in favor of indigenous ones, and remain faithful to Christ and Scripture. The result in practice was an authentically Celtic church that was also authentically biblical. Many were Patrick’s detractors, who identified Christianity too closely with “the Roman way.” They would level the same critiques against Aidan, Columba and the others who inherited Patrick’s missional mantle, but criticisms notwithstanding, Celtic Christianity was one of the great achievements of the early mission of the church.

The Celtic church was characterized more by the centrifugal missionary impulse than the centripetal institutionalizing one, and did not develop centralized organizational structures. Rome increasingly adopted a principle of enforcing cultural uniformity over indigenization. Ultimately, after 300 years of Celtic Christianity had flourished in Celtic cultural forms, the church was forced into the Roman mold. Benedictine rule was enforced on Celtic monasteries, Celtic leaders pressured to conform.[7] Centripetal institutionalizing prevailed ultimately, but the fragrance of the flower that was Patrick’s missional genius remains.

---

[1] O’Leary, Rev. James, The Most Ancient Lives of St. Patrick, New York, P.J. Kennedy, 1880, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18482/18482-h/18482-h.htm; Internet; accessed 22 January 2008

[2] Patrick, Confession, [online document]; (Academy for Ancient Texts) available from http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/celtic/ctexts/p01.html; Internet; accessed 22 January 2008

[3] McCausland, Nelson M., “A Protestant View of Patrick, Part Two”[online article]; (Ensign Message, VIII No. 2, Apr-Jun 2006); available from http://www.ensignmessage.com/archives/patrick2.html; Internet; accessed 22 January 2008

[4] Hunter, George, The Celtic Way of Evangelism, Nashville, Abingdon Press, 2000, 21ff

[5] Ibid, 26f

[6] Cahill, Thomas, How the Irish Saved Civilization, New York, Doubleday, 1995, passim

[7] Hunter, op cit, 41f

Cultural and theological assumptions

Missional principles demand that we dig out previously unexamined assumptions. Here’s an exercise to show one example of how that might be useful.

You’re a missionary in Mali, West Africa.

Ibrahim has just converted to Christianity from Islam.
His three wives, with whom he has 12 children, four with each wife, have also converted.

They want to be baptized and join the church.

Discuss the theological and ethical implications for the Christian norm of “family,” and how Ibrahim’s family will be integrated into the life of the church.
Devote particular attention to institutional, confessional, and theological cultural commitments. Scrutinize which parts of your response come from unexamined cultural assumptions, and which come from transcendent biblical norms. Be prepared to discuss alternative formulations.

In the light of this exercise, look at how you work missionally in your mission to Western culture. How many of your assumptions proceed from commitments to a particular ecclesial subculture, and how many are transcendent norms? How much of a cultural divide does someone have to cross in order to become a Christian?

Update on the earliest use of “missional”

Andrew Jones kindly posted an update to his earlier post here http://tallskinnykiwi.typepad.com/tallskinnykiwi/2008/01/missional-first.html

He also asked if any theology students had access to a hard copy of the volume in question. Since I only had the downloaded PDF from Google books, I contacted the Harvard-Andover Divinity School library with the following request:

*** quote begins ***

I am researching the earliest occurrence of the word missional” in English. Google books has a scan of a volume containing Proceedings of the Baptist Convention for Missionary Purposes held in Philadelphia, May 1814. The scan is from your copy.
What appears to be the second volume in the bound collection is the First Annual Report of the Baptist Board of Foreign Missions for the United States, Philadelphia, 1815. On page 26 of that report, the tenth line up from the bottom, last word in the line, Google’s OCR of the scan reads “missional” but this appears to be a bad OCR read from a line cut off. The word appears to be “missionary” and is cut off in the Google books scan. Would it be possible to verify the word on that page in the sentence which reads, “From a member of the Salem, a friendly letter has been received recently, in which the writer declares himself ‘willing to do every thing he can to advance the Redeemer’s kingdom in the world,’and that he ‘feels a very warm side towards missiona* purposes.’
The specific word in question is the last one in the tenth line up from the bottom - I think it’s “missionary” rather than “missional” and that this is therefore not an occurrence of the latter word.
*** end quote ***

The reference librarian was kind enough to pull down the volume in question, and responded with this note:

“I have looked at the second item in the bound volume that begins with the Proceedings of the Baptist Convention for Missionary Purposes held in Philadelphia, May 1814 that is in our collection. As you suspected, the word that you’re questioning on page 26, is indeed ‘missionary’, rather than missional. “

Having properly verified facts is always good news. So it appears that Andrew correctly reported that the 1883 book The Heros of African Discovery and Adventure, with its reference to “missional bishop Tozer,” is the earliest English-language use of the word “missional” on current record. Should any researchers come up with earlier occurrences, please feel free to post them.

Earliest usage of the word “Missional”

Andrew Jones, the Tall Skinny Kiwi and prolific blogger on emerging/missional church, posted a brief article here in which he has the earliest use one can find of the word “Missional”.

Wanting to use this reference in my masters thesis, which is still in progress, I followed up and looked through the references Andrew posted.

His reference referred to the Proceedings of the Baptist Convention for Missionary Purposes, Held in Philadelphia in May, 1814, page 249. Published by American Baptist Foreign Mission Society.

There is no page 249 in the document, but the scanned book is in Google Books. The plain text view shows “missional” on p. 26, but looking at the actual scan shows this is a bad OCR reading of the word “missionary,” cut off at the end of the line.

Andrew’s other reference, the citation that “Bishop Tozer is called the “Missional Bishop of Central Africa and by some the ” fighting parson,”from The Heros of African Discovery and Adventure, from the death of Livingstone to the year 1882, by C.E. Bourne, 1883, page 191, is rock solid, though. This reference is verified as “Missional” by looking at the scanned image, and is the earliest conclusively verified use of the word in English in a sense which resonates with contemporary usage I can find right now.

Other references that come up on Google:

The Tribune Almanac and Political Register For… - Page 138
by Horace Greeley - United States - 1901 - Charles T. McMullin; superintendent of Sabbath school and missional work, Dr.
James A. Worden; editorial superintendent …
[bad OCR reading of the word "missionary". Page is cut off at right margin. Letter "r" clearly visible.]

Non-English readings:

Westafrikanische Kautschuk-expedition - Page 72
by Otto Warburg, Robert Henriques, Rudolf Schlechter - Rubber - 1900 - 326 pages
Als ich gegen 7 Uhr aufbrach, war das Wasser des Stromes derartig bewegt, dafs
mir die Missional-e rieten, noch länger zu bleiben, …
[Bad OCR read. Word is "Missionare" at the end of a line, followed by "reiten" on the next line.]

Westafrikanische Kautschuk-expedition - Page 72
by Otto Warburg, Robert Henriques, Rudolf Schlechter - Rubber - 1900 - 326 pages
Als ich gegen 7 Uhr aufbrach, war das Wasser des Stromes derartig bewegt, dafs
mir die Missional-e rieten, noch länger zu bleiben, …
[Bad OCR read. Word is "Mission a' l'assistance" with accent above the a."]

Die Expedition in die Seen von China, Japan and Ochotsk unter Commando von … - Page 131
by Wilhelm Heine - United States North Pacific Exploring Expedition - 1858
Missional« …
[Bad OCR read. Word is "Missionare"]

Thanks very much, Andrew for looking up the references. Sorry the one didn’t pan out, but we can at least state conclusively that the term has been in use since at least 1883.

Random thoughts on perichoretic-missional ecclesiology

Having been a bit remiss in working on my Masters thesis I’m trying to knuckle down and get it done now. This post and subsequent posts until the thesis is done will be something of a journal where I’m recording some thoughts that I want to remember for the thesis, though I may not wind up using them all.
So here are a few disconnected thoughts:

• The working title of the thesis is “The Missing Mark: Toward a Missional Ecclesiology”. Several reasons informing the choice of Missional Ecclesiology as a thesis topic. First, “missional” has become such a buzzword lately it has lost its meaning. I’d like to reclaim the term and get back to one that is primarily informed theologically, not a formulation that’s pragmatic/methodological or cultural/stylistic. Second, several folks in the church planting galaxy have noted a weakness in evangelical ecclesiology. It’s probably gross presumption to think I might be able to add something that might provide some answers, but I am willing to try to at least formulate some leading questions that may lead toward some ecclesiological answers.
• What are various approaches to the Nicene formulation, “One holy, catholic and apostolic church?” Even defining those adjectives by turning them into nouns can be problematic.

Video venues, small groups and context

I’m following with great interest the discussion on the pros and cons of multi-site venues that includes these posts from Drew Goodmanson, and ongoing discussion between some of the folks at the Journey Church in St. Louis and Bob Hyatt of Evergreen on Bob’s blog, including these posts from Darrin Patrick, amplification from Brad Andrews, who I gather works with Darrin in St. Louis, both of whose posts are at least partly in response to Bob’s thoughtful yet incisive comments in the original post that prompted the discussion here on Bob’s blog. In that post, Bob has expresses some really valid concerns, including the following, which I quote directly:

• “My concerns about video venues are copious. I have extreme issues with people who are being eldered and taught by people they do not regularly come into contact with, whose lives they cannot see, know and inform as well as be informed by. This is bad in the case of a mega church, where most do not know who their elders are, much less “know” them.”

I need to begin with a disclaimer: I was last involved with a church plant 15 years ago, planting a church in Moscow. I’m presently finishing a seminary degree and hope to church plant when that’s done. But I’m not an expert, and really have no ground on which to critique these guys who are in the field doing it presently. But I’ve been around long enough to have experience in several congregational settings as well as enough extra-ecclesial experience to have learned a couple of small things.

So I’m not going to critique - both sides of the discussion have valid points. I do want to add something to the discussion, however. I think Darren is spot on when he speaks about the quality of the leader as the primary limiting factor for a church plant, and I think that Drew has a good point when he asks whether church planters and pastors may share completely different gift mixes and communications styles.

My work as a translator has included doing cultural training for people who are relocating to or working with people from other countries. One concept we deal with in cross-cultural communication and interaction bears direct relationship to the discussion going on here, and it is the issue of context.

The term as expressed isn’t very helpful because we tend to use the same word in church planting circles in a completely different sense. In this sense, however, context refers to an aspect of communication style and cultural ethos. This is important for congregational culture, and an inevitable source of internal tension because this issue exposes two desired aspects of congregational life that can be at cross purposes. Let me explain.

Ubuntu upgrade to 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon

After loading Ubuntu 7.10 on my home notebook and my second desktop at work, I finally bit the bullet and upgraded the home desktop from 7.04 Feisty.

The upgrade process was as slick as could be. After updating my Feisty distro, I pressed the “New version 7.10 available” button in the Update manager. The first attempt stopped after warning me about a couple of non-Ubuntu repositories. I unchecked them from my sources, clicked the version upgrade button once more, and about half an hour later, the system was ready for a reboot into 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon. After reboot everything came back perfectly - so far I haven’t noticed a single anomaly in the upgrade. I’ve been running Linux only about three years, but in that time doing distro upgrades has become very easy and slick indeed. Well done to the folks at Canonical!

Four approaches to innovation in the church: The Complacent and Consumers (part 5 of 5)

After the introduction to this series in post one we talked about four types of people or responses to innovation: lovers in post two, angry young church dudes in post three, and the efficient in post four. In this final post I had intended to discuss only one category, the complacent, but I find that I need to include one more as well: consumers. There’s a bit of overlap between these two groups but they aren’t identical, so I need to tackle them separately.

First the complacent. Actually these folks are unlikely to show up at a church plant. They’re far more likely to think there are plenty of churches already and that church planting is just a bunch of foolishness that will ultimately take people away from churches that are already struggling. Debunking that particular myth is outside the scope of the present post; we’re talking about complacency here.

So if they won’t show up at a church plant, why discuss them at all in a church planting blog? The problem is that people from the next category we’ll discuss here, consumers, will show up at a church plant, and they are quick to morph into complacency all too quickly as soon as the church plant has anything looking like sustainability.

The primary motivating factor for complacent folk is fear: fear of effort, fear of risk, fear of insecurity, fear of failure, fear of discomfort. That last point is a secondary motivator for complacency: comfort. People who are already complacent will not come to the church plant but others who are there have to be aware of the unrelenting temptation toward complacency, which always starts innocent and innocuous enough. Usually it takes this form: “Wow, we’ve made it through launch, we are running an average of 120 in attendance. The operating budget is met and we have a little bit extra for missions and projects. We’ve made it! We are a real church now! Now we can sit back and relax for a while. The problem is, a while very quickly turns into forever. Sometimes new churches take a structural step that handicaps any hope for further growth by building too early, when there isn’t enough budget to build a facility that has sufficient headroom for sustainable growth. Now, continuous growth, however desirable it may be and however much the old church growth school of the 70s and 80s (still very much alive in the megachurch model) held it up as an ideal, nowadays there are other approaches to pursuing mission in ways that result in continuous increase in conversions and expand the kingdom without building a massive dinosaur of an institution. Institutionalization is another relentless temptation we need to be wary of, but that too is outside the scope of this post. I need to stick with the two categories I was talking about.

Complacency takes form in community and results in what I call a zombie church - a church that goes through all the motions of a living community of faith, but in reality is dead. Mark Driscoll is kinder in his term - he calls these churches “Sarah churches,” meaning that they are barren and categorically will not bring forth new life unless God directly, sovereignly and supernaturally intervenes. Complacency is a fatal virus. It saps vision and mission. And while folks who are already complacent won’t go to a new church plant, folks who are there can burn out from the privations and rigors of a planting church and quickly settle into complacency. Your job as the pastor of the new church is to continually keep the church moving on mission. Keep the vision alive. Make sure to communicate over and over and over again what the mission is, and all the myriad distractions that draw away from pursuing the kingdom potential of the congregation - help the church become everything Jesus dreamed this church would become in this community in this time.

Volumes could be (and have been) written about complacency but enough now. On to another oversimplification.

Consumers, unlike the complacent, will show up at the new church plant, especially as soon as there’s any buzz going around about the new church. They’ll show up, plant their butts in the folding chairs, sit back and watch the show. They’ll post their reviews in blogs, and complain about anything that doesn’t suit them. But they’re just here for the ride; it will not naturally occur to them to get out and push.

Before I come down too hard on consumers, it’s necessary to point out that it’s (mostly) not their fault: they’ve been trained to be consumers by a lifetime of exposure to messages all telling them that their best life is one purchase away, all they have to do is put it on their credit card, after all you deserve it! It’s not just relentless marketing that has programmed them to be spectators. Most likely the churches they’ve attended have been well-run by professional staff. Congregants just need to show up on Sunday and put their tithe checks in the gold anodized aluminum offering plates built into the non-liturgy. Just like Disneyland, they pay their money and receive in return the illusion of an experience in safety and comfort.

Your job is not to cater to the desires of consumers, but to wake them up. Show them that what they spend most of their time and effort pursuing is illusory, that there is a reality called the kingdom of God. The program of redemption is real, and Jesus expects us all to do our part. When he said we are to take up our cross daily, he didn’t mean we were to carry the cross - he meant we are supposed to die on it.

If you’re the church planter, complacency or consumerism in the church represent both threats and opportunities to you. Your preaching and teaching is what makes the difference. The only thing that will shake a churchgoing consumer or complacent Christian out of his slumber is a supernatural transformative encounter with Jesus Christ. That simply isn’t going to happen if you preach nice handy little practical sermons about “building margin into your life” or “how to succeed in marriage.” Those aren’t bad things in any way, but they fall way short of the kind of message that God calls us to preach if we are to be kingdom leaders. It depends on you, preacher man. But take heart, this is all part of God’s plan. Remember that the Spirit works in the study as well as in the pulpit. And if you get on your knees and allow God to transform you, the transformation he works in you will be a vehicle he uses to transform others. Jesus is in the total transformation business, and he does it with preachers, with Christians (even complacent and consumeristic ones) and with entire congregations.

Here again, there are volumes that could be written from what’s unsaid here. Bottom line, complacency and consumerism are mortal threats to the life of your congregation. Your preaching stands between the the lives of your people and these two killers. But Jesus knows this too. If you are faithful in seeking his vision, his passion, his power, then he will send his spirit and will work wonders through your preaching even if you are a paunchy, balding, bespectacled hillbilly like the one writing this.

Four approaches to innovation - The Efficient (part 4 of 5)

This post is number four in our discussion about four types of people who are in congregations and their responses to change and innovation in the church. Post One was an introductory summary. Post two concerned the category I’ve called “Lovers,” after Jeff Bonforte’s tech talk on technology adopters (part of the impetus behind this series). Lovers, you will recall, are those who simply love theology and things of the church. They will gravitate toward teaching Sunday Schools, and may go on to seminary classes and church leadership. Their strength is their passion for learning about the church and their focus on it. Their weakness, though, proceeds from the very focus that makes them exceptional. They may be so preoccupied with matters of theology that they become weak or ineffective in every other area (see the post on theology geeks here.) If you are a lover, then you are reading theology books, and probably theology books are all you ever read. That passion, focus and dedication is commendable, but to be effective in the church you need to branch out. Read widely, works that engage the wider culture. Read on the arts, sciences. Read some detective novels or political thrillers (or see some movies.) These will help round you out and help you to connect with ordinary people who aren’t lovers of theology, and will give you a source of metaphors and images to draw upon so that you can teach theological concepts without having to use specialized theological language.

In post three, the category was “Angry Young Church Dudes.” These are often lovers who have attained great ability and vision for church leadership but have become frustrated with the all-too-apparent gap between what church could and ought to be, and its present actuality. Angry young church dudes want to act but the structures and style of the present reality of church try to make them sit down and be good, tithing spectators: leave the leadership to the pros, thanks. But they often see the short-sightedness of the “pros.” Angry young church dudes may have started off as lovers, but have often been wounded by the church. If their passion can be harnessed, developed and directed properly, though, they are the primary force that will produce change in the church. Not all change will be helpful. Some will be inept, and some will be driven by issues under the anger that manifest out of unresolved conflicts in the character of the angry young dude. Hurt and anger are powerful things, but can be destructive to the angry dude and those around him. Exercise care to channel that passion toward constructive contribution to the church, otherwise your angry young church dude will disappear, or worse, wreak havoc in the existing congregation. Angry young church dudes are like racehorces - fidgety and temperamental, but when they get going they can do amazing things amazingly quickly.

This post we’re going to talk about another category: the Efficient. Efficients are necessary in any human structure or organization. They help get things running and keep them running. Outside the church they tend to be in managerial positions up to about the director level. Inside the church they are the kind of folks who step up and help keep things running. They do things, and help organize things. These people are natural born deacons, reaching into all the activities and events of the church and making sure the i’s are dotted, the t’s are crossed, the details are all taken care of. There will be some efficients among the people in a church plant - they may be new believers or transplants who have moved in from outside the location. Efficients tend to be very loyal and stable, so you won’t find a lot of them among church-hoppers; they won’t be coming to the church plant from existing churches, at least not in great numbers.

The great strength of efficients is their enthusiasm for getting things done, and done right. They’re easy to recognize: they will look, for instance, at how you’re going about collating, folding and sorting church bulletins, and set up tables and lay things out so that doing the job is easier and more consistent. The more able among them are natural project managers, so that when you have a major project like building a facility going on, they will be able to look at all the tasks, lay them out in a Gantt chart and show you what the critical path of the project is and why that’s important to you in case you never heard of such a thing. Sometimes they’ll seem nit-picky, but their eye for detail is really helpful to you. Especially if you are a big-picture visionary, you need an efficient to work with you to fill in the details and map out a path of how to implement the big picture. Efficients are the people who live in spreadsheets, checklists, and who will be able to help you build processes and procedures to make sure your organization will work right and be able to cope with contingencies. They’ll bug you when they bring up things you’ve forgotten, saying things like “Have you thought about what to do when this happens, or when thathappens?

The great weakness of efficient people is that often they get so focused on best practices and methodologies they miss the spiritual big picture. They think in organizational terms, not in theological terms. what you have to do as a pastor is help to form them spiritually and theologically so that there is a redemptive integrating principle behind all the things they do. Otherwise, they will have a tendency toward pragmatism that can move quickly toward a kind of expediency that will harm the church. What happens in the church planting world is that often efficient types become enamored with methodologies and best practices and become church planters because they’re sure they can build a better organization than the sloppy, ineffective church they were brought up in. Efficients can become angry church dudes too, because they see how theology lovers may be so engrossed in their theology that the church goes to organizational seed around them. But if you as a pastor can help to form them spiritually, teaching them to get in touch with Jesus and let his word and redemptive program be behind all they do, the efficient can be wonderful to have.

Bottom line is this: You absolutely need these folks in your church, but they need to be made disciples. Otherwise you may wind up with a beautifully running, thriving and growing organization that is bereft of spiritual life. But if you will get the efficient in touch with Jesus and Scripture, they will help your congregation thrive.