Beginning a new group

Beginning a new group is a good moment to think this through.

http://peace.mennolink.org/agree.html

Focus

This blog is linked to Kres Jesu Krist (Cornwall Church Health) and will remain focussed on church health news and issues.  For discussion, the notes appear on facebook, and that’s the best place to enter into dialogue.  I’m aiming to make a weekly entry each weekend.

All being well, the Messianic bet midrash/chevra will have its own new blog, which won’t be open to everyone for a few months yet.

Salvation Army Major Martyred on Christmas Eve While “Doing the Most Good!”

From Commissioner Joe Noland’s blog via JK and SC, I pass this on: ‘Upstaged by an aborted terrorist attack on Flight 253, this story has not received the international media attention it deserves. Read about it at the following link: http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2009/dec/25/majors-shooting-tragedy-community-say-authorities/?latest

Poignant to this story is the following news clip: “The Wises had just adopted their children — ages 4, 6 and 8 — last year, Johnson said. The three were siblings who came from an abusive family. They were receiving counseling after their father’s death.” These children were witnesses to their new father’s shooting.

Further, after the shooting, “The suspects were seen running toward a government-funding housing project” in the same community where “the Major was known for his work with disadvantaged children.”

Sound familiar? It was all beginning to take shape on that Christmas Eve some two millenniums ago. “He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.” “Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” “Crucify Him!” “Forgive them for they know not what they do.”

These are Words from Scripture describing the unfolding of Jesus’ journey on this planet, ending with an act of martyrdom. Isn’t this what Philip Wise’s journey is all about? What is the message of Christmas? “Peace on Earth, Goodwill toward men” – Good News! Fox News and CNN have missed this message in their reporting, with an emphasis on the bad news! Let’s make up where they have missed out. Send this News Flash to your circle of friends and ask them to keep the Love Chain going.

JN’

¹³Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. John 15

Prayers appreciated for the family of Philip Wise.

http://arkansasnews.com/2009/12/24/salvation-army-major-gunned-down-on-christmas-eve-in-north-little-rock/

Lk 2:8-11

⁸ And there were shepherds living out in the fields near by, keeping watch over their flocks at night.

⁹ An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.

¹⁰ But the angel said to them, Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.

¹¹ Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.

Tasks for TSA in 2010:

Just for fun, here are my ten points I think the international church I belong to,  The Salvation Army, needs to attend to in 2010:

1. There are more people in our congregations with frustrated vocations or no sense of vocation than those with one actively nourished and affirmed by TSA.  This needs to totally reverse.

2. Officers need to be held to account as powerfully for discipling, developing, deploying soldiers in meaningful missional service as they are for financial and moral trustworthiness.

3. The army needs to be clear thinking about how to adapt to reach people in postmodernity.

4. The army needs to move toward a clear and shared understanding of how to address the problem of clericalisation and post-Christendom adjustment.

5. The army needs to embed in the thinking of every officer and every new soldier that we are a church planting movement, a movement where planting new churches is normal, not exceptional, and where every soldier should expect to spend a good part of their lives involved in this as a matter of routine.

6. All soldiers need to train in conflict transformation and conflict literacy. if we can’t resolve conflict in life-giving ways we can’t handle change or get anything done.

7. The army needs to attend carefully to its wake (former officers and former soldiers)  and understand how to build trust internally as well as externally.

8. The army needs to grasp that theological reflection should be part of the normal life of any congregation, this particularly because we are in a rapidly changing missional context.  Church planting movements have to handle rapid change, and rapid progress  and need to do so by instinctively thinking in an ethically driven way, ie in a way that values and prioritizes reading and reflecting thoughtfully (together and widely) on the Bible and on our daily practice as part of a learning community.

9. The army needs to make sure that every officer understands the factors that impede renewal in congregations, particularly the problem of control cultures and leaders thinking in terms of ‘my ministry’ rather than the ministry of others.

10 but absolutely not least: We need to get on our knees and pray for powerful renewal and revival now.

A comment on corps, and blog round-up

The dynamic, rather than the static, version:

A corps: a Salvation Army unit established [evolving, renewing itself, adjusting to a changing missional context]   for [to be continually renewing] the propogation of the gospel [through sending out disciples to make disciples].

O+R for Corps Officers Ch1Sect4pp1a (p5).

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http://davidkeen.blogspot.com/2009/12/who-let-dads-out.html

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Useful stocking fillers for those who use powerpoint regularly: http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2009/12/10-books-to-read-in-2010.html

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Pure gold from Seth Godin: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/12/fear-of-bad-ideas.html

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On the theft from Auschwitz, and rising antisemitism:  http://yinonblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/disturbing-trends.html

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Advent stuff: http://msainfo.org/blog/what-are-we-waiting-for-blog-series-summary-for-third-week-of-advent

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And a quote from
Rabbi Yisrael Lipkin of Salant

The world is like a small cloth spread over a table.  By pulling the cloth too much towards himself, one leaves the other end exposed.  (ht Neil Harris)

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Faith and Theology best books list: http://faith-theology.blogspot.com/2009/12/best-books-of-2009.html

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Warmest blessings for Christmas to my readers, and thanks for the feedback I’ve had over the last few years, I appreciate it. Wishing everyone a happy, healthy and fruitful new year!

Just tidying my bookshelf as part of the prep for moving house, and zipped past Loren B Mead saying that the role of the ‘clergy’ is to keep the congregation ‘centred’ on Jesus and our mission.  I don’t think anything justifies having an ordained elite in the church, because the damage it does to ‘laity’ by defining them as such. But his thought does raise the question of how a congregation stays centred. The response to that in organic and missional church is that the centre needs to be completely embedded in the DNA of every disciple and it must be explicit.  The object is not to build congregations, so in a sense if you have ‘built a congregation’ in the traditional sense of the word and the congregants are at risk of losing their centredness,  you have already lost the DNA of being a church planting movement.   The need for clergy only arises as church planting slows down, and it’s a response to a failure of discipleship.

On a practical level, from experience, I’d say the movement from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4, from receiving Christ to sharing faith to gathering and discipling to sending out disciples to make disciples needs to recognise well that the step from 3 to 4 requires the disciplemaker to be able to keep people centred on Jesus, both individually and at least in small groups.

opposites

Drawing some threads together what came out of conversation here was that The Salvation Army can’t be both a church planting movement and a Christendom clergy-laity shaped church. Those two things are fundamentally incompatible.

What I can do is affirm, model, and encourage anything which helps everyone to live missionally,  and simply ignore – not engage with – the rest, so I will think over how to explore that direction on this blog.

Ordination conversations

http://therubicon.org/2009/12/ordination-to-what-for-what/#comment-4198.

There are interesting arguments.  While the institutional church may be a great help for large scale social projects, and the brand’s reputation helpful in a myriad of ways, if the institutional structure with its ordination and power structures is irrelevant or a handicap to the life of ordinary believers in the congregations, and actually holds up the church from adapting to its missional context, then change needs to happen.