Previous Post – Junia Is Not Alone

When David Fitch posted his recent blog proposal, “On Planting Churches That Do Not Cannibalize: The Luke 10 Project”, I was excited.  With Little Flowers Community struggling for sustainability, his proposal offered some exciting hope- an approach that helps small teams of planters sustainably engage their communities bi-vocational church planters (read the post for more details, as I don’t want to use too much space reiterating).

It should be stated that David is not attempting to set up THE model or formula for all church plant.  Rather, it is something of an experiment that is adaptable within many contexts through our post-Christendom culture.  As I consider what he is proposing, I get excited, longing to apply it in my context.  I see some serious challenges, including where the funding will come for the proposed team of servant leaders.

As I was reading the post and comment again, I noticed that my friend Wendy McCaig (Embrace Richmond) posted some push back on her blog.  While she affirmed much of Fitch’s proposal, she expressed this concern:

“My issue is with over emphasizing ‘relocation’ and under emphasizing ‘indigenous leadership development.’” (from “Church Planting: A Hostile Takeover?”)

She goes on to express concern with the implicit assumption that “the Body of Christ is absent, and therefore we have to ‘take Jesus to people’”.  This is a fair and valid concern, since this assumption has all too often shaped much of Christian mission over the last few centuries, often with devastating (though not unredeemed) consequences.  She calls, instead, that the Luke 10 Project give more explicit emphasis to “training, equipping and sending” local Christians already part of the neighbourhood.  Her point is critical and her case well made.

However, I feel that, just as Fitch’s proposal lacked this nuance (and I have little doubt that David would fully agree with Wendy and that his omission was more oversight than intention), I feel that perhaps Wendy’s response nuance as well.  I do not say this critically, but rather in the hope to carry both great posts forward in conversation.  No doubt my own post will need such help from others.  Here are my primary concerns:

There still seems too much of a dichotomy between the “us and them” between locals and outsiders.  The emphasis on indigenous leadership was (and is) an important correction to the tendency to treat the “mission field” paternalistically.  However, many missiologists have noted that the corrective has, at times, produced culturally myopic Christians.  The Body of Christ, after all, is about unified diversity under the headship of Christ.  Therefore, I think we need to be explicit about looking a means to see a blended community of locals and outsiders.

In our context, for example, this is essential.  The “us/them” dynamic at play is largely one of locality based on socioeconomic differences.  We have found that our community needs “outsiders” to participate in the community- not necessarily as leaders, but simply as members.  Consequently, as I see the struggles in many of our suburban churches, I know that for some to relocate and enter into community with us would feel a deep need in their faith walks as well.  It is about mutual transformation.

Another critical reality that we must acknowledge is that, in most North American contexts, the “us/them” dynamic is a division of our own making.  As I am fond of reminding people, when God said (in Deut. 15:4) that there should be no poor among us, He wasn’t suggesting segregation.  In other words, it was as the church has been co-opted by the cultural values of consumerism, individualism, etc. that the true relocation happened.  The relocation that Fitch recommends (like that recommended by John Perkins and others) is not about conquest, but about reconciliation.  Further, like the incarnation of God in Christ, our relocation, if true, makes the “them” into “us”.

My province is one of the ancestral homes of the Métis people- a people group born out of the inter-marriage between early European settlers and local First Nations peoples.  However, rather than one culture swallowing up the other, the Métis reflect a true union, producing new people groups.  My own French Canadian ancestors represent one part of that heritage, namely through the inter-marriage of the exploring, fur trading voyageurs and the First Nations people they encounters, traded with and even lived among.  They are now a proud and distinct people group.

The voyageurs have, for a long time, represented something of an archetype for how I see our place as Christians within the world.  We are called to be daring explorers who connect with the indigenous people on their own terms, relating to them uniquely and, together, producing something new.  Yes, like the voyageurs complicity in the colonization of the First Nations people, so too are we “outsider” Christians often complicit with the colonizing agenda of Christendom.  However, acknowledging these tensions, the product of our coming together can be something profoundly new and beautiful.

Therefore, I affirm both David & Wendy’s posts.  However, I believe that the missing element in both is the intentionally of the coming together of the “us” and “them” as an intentional move of our missional engagement.  This foundation of mutual transformation is critical, I believe, to our success in birthing new communities of faith and mission in our post-Christendom world.

For those of you who have been following our Chiara House project, we’ve found ourselves stalled by city bureaucracy.  It is deeply frustrating, especially since it is not due to anything we’ve done, but purely dysfunctional systems.  However, while the building awaits the renovation process, the work on every other level continues.  Check out the following video:

If you want to help us get the word out, there are also a couple of other shorter videos:

Previous Post – Courting Satan

After waiting so long, I am excited to announce that my new book, “The Cost of Community: Jesus, St. Francis & Life in the Kingdom”, is now shipping!  As if that was not exciting enough, today I received an email from the amazing folks at InterVarsity Press informing me that they want to do something special for you all.  Between now and October 28th, they are offering the book to you at 40% off retail price.  Further, if you buy 3 or more copies, shipping is free in Canada & the US.

For more information, click here and place your order.  Please help get the word out.

Peace & all good!

P.S. For all those who already ordered the book, but didn’t get this kind of deal, all I can say is thank you for your early support.  It went a LONG way in helping the book off to a great start.

Previous Post – Following Jesus Together

One of the things I love most about the blogosphere is the way it has allowed me to connect with Christians from all over the world.  Specifically, I have been encouraged by the stories and friendships of pastors and church planters who, like our community, have forged a less “traditional” path.  One such person is my good friend, Bryan Dormaier, who is part of Christian Associates and is working out of Portland.

Bryan is part of a community called Sacred Roots.  I think it is so important to hear each others stories, to be encouraged, inspired and challenged by one another.  This is one such community I’ve been encouraged, inspired & challenged by.  I know you will too.  Here is a video about their community:

Portland, Oregon from Christian Associates on Vimeo.

Previous Post – Love Our Enemies?

From my friend, Pernell Goodyear:

Previous Post – Surviving Missional

There has been much discussion of late about the nature of missional churches- about leadership & discipleship, about sustainability and survival.  David Fitch responded to some of these themes yesterday in his excellent post “Death of a Church Plant – Reflections & Hope…”, which (along with the comments that follow) is well worth your time to read.  Thanks, David.

These topics, especially the challenges of finding a sustainable way to continue to build a truly missional church, have been central on my mind for well over a year now.  While I do not have “the” (and I doubt there is such an easy, singular solution), I have been increasingly come to believe that there is one dynamic that been given its due attention and credit.  I believe that the sustainability, maturity and quality of any missional endeavor is the formation of genuine, true community.  At first, this claim seems as though it is a given.  However, “community” (much like “missional”) is a word that is all too casually thrown around by some, resulting in a diminishing of its meaning and confusion as to its nature.  One blog post is inadequate to explore the depth and complexity of what makes true community, so I may do more in the weeks to come.

An all too common comment I hear from church leaders- be they missional or otherwise- is how easily many people move on.  Even those committed to leadership seem to (in my opinion) too easily give reasons to reducing their commitment or even completely leaving.  On one hand, church planting (especially those committed to the missional-incarnational) is hard and therefore it is to be expected.  On the other hand, I genuinely believe that, next to marriage and family devotion, commitment to a community of faith should be something that is taken incredibly seriously.  That something is difficult and costly is not a good enough reason to leave.  In fact, the most difficult relationships are most often the ones we value the most.

So why is devotion/loyalty to our faith communities so weak?  There are many reasons, not the least of which is that we have been discipled into a consumer-mentality to church, which gave rise to an unprecedented sense of entitlement (spurred on by the unhealthy “self-esteem” movement of the 80’s-90’s).  Further, the increasing likelihood of people having unhealthy & unhappy family dynamic makes it unsurprising that a sense of familial commitment is foreign or even threatening to many.

Yet this is the very thing that is critical- a sense of devoted loyalty based on relational intimacy, tough-love honesty, genuine vulnerability and covenanted commitment (with a sacramental sense of the seriousness of such commitments).  Such community cuts through the pretense of our “posed-wholeness”, exposing out naked brokenness before God & each other.  It is difficult, inefficient and raw.  It is also absolutely essential and completely possible.

While Little Flowers Community by no means has it all together, we have been committed to pursuing this kind of community.  It has not eliminated the problems mentioned above (or in the previous post)- in fact, in some ways it makes them that much more painful.  However, it has also been an unparalleled blessing to many of us.  The depth and honesty of many of our relationships is unlike anything I have experienced before.  From it emerges dynamics that are beginning to reflect the early church community- where ownership is blurred, where what we have is easily shared- not as noble charity, but natural mutuality.  It is really beautiful, especially in our inner city context.

This kind of community is incredibly attractive, especially to those who have experienced (and continue to experience) the brokenness of poverty, addiction, abuse, racism, sexism, etc.- dynamics all too common in our inner city neighbourhood.  And people come and share life with us.  It sounds beautiful- and it is!- but it is also incredibly costly, taxing our time, energy and resources, making 15 hours a week, 20 hours a week or even 30 hours a week, largely inadequate. (As an aside, David Fitch helped me hugely last year when he told me that the 15 hour a week ideal would not work in contexts like ours).

So, yes, leadership development and discipleship are important.  Of course, it will take time and be measured by different measures in our post-Christendom context.  However, such communities among the poor (like Little Flowers) need people to choose to share life with us.  This is what happens when Matthew 9:37 is confronted with Matthew 7:24.  We need each other, but making this happen will be costly.

True community is not a “good aspect of healthy church life”, but rather an essential and demanding fruit of the disruptive Gospel of Jesus Christ drawing us together as one Body, reflecting the unity of the Triune God, in Whose image we are created together.

Previous Post – A Prophetic (Franciscan) Challenge

Recently, Jason Coker began posting a series of very raw and honest articles about their decision to shut down their missional church plant, Ikon (see Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 & Part 4).  In these incredibly vulnerable posts, Jason explores the whole story of how his community came to be, the struggles throughout, the reasons for shutting it down and even his own personal insecurities and fears throughout.  As hard as it is to read about the end of a great community, these posts are also a gift to the rest of it.

As I shared with Jason, the parallels between Ikon and Little Flowers Community are many, even (and perhaps especially) in respect to the challenges that ultimately led to their decision to shut down.  To be perfectly honest, these realities scare the hell out of me.  People have tried to assure me not to worry too much about it, but I have deep sense that our community is facing some of the same challenges.

What scares me more is that this story- the story that I identify with in Jason’s experience- is one that I am seeing played out again and again in small missional communities.  I believe in the values we hold and even more so in the communities we are a part of.  However, I also know that survive, to be sustainable will require some significant changes.

The fact is this: the values and practices of being missional are much harder and less efficient than most church planting/growth models.  There is intentional commitment to resist choices that could quickly “solve” many of the immediate problems, yet compromise the core convictions and “DNA” of the community in the long run.  Some will suggest that these convictions are thus proven idealistic and untenable.  Perhaps they are right, but I am far from convinced.

Yet such conviction- as strong as it may be- does not help the difficult realities that we face.  Yes, I will trust God and be faithful.  I know that God provides and is faithful.  However, I also know that God invites us into costly lives of sacrificial service.  I also know that often His children suffer because of others choices.

I am discouraged, but hopeful.  Tired, but stubborn.  I deeply believe in what God is doing in our little community.  We are seeking to be obedient to God in community that has all too often been ignored or abandoned by the church.  We are building a family that desires to be faithful to God and one another without some of the basic resources that most churches take for granted.  We are imperfect, broken and messy, but we are seeing His grace revealed in ways we could not have elsewhere.

I am not sure if such a blog post is effective or helpful, but I know I need to say this:  We need a faithful few who are willing to join us- join us in our faith community and in our local neighbourhood- and share the joys and burdens of building God’s kingdom here. I don’t know who those people will be, but I want to ask you to genuinely consider what part you might play.

Previous Post – Living Mission

Over the last couple of years I have been noticing a pattern in church/ministry/missions engagement among Christian that has left me somewhat unsettled.  At first I could not put my finger on it, but I began to see that it was linked to the culture of volunteerism that has developed in our Christian sub-culture.  Volunteering has become the primary way in which Christians are invited to participate in the work and mission of God & His Church in the world.  While much good has come of this (and I am not suggesting the eradication of Christian volunteerism), I truly believe that we have crippled and compromised our missional capacity by making it so central and foundational to our approach to mission/ministry.

It has been since planting a church that I have seen it most clearly.  Initially, the passion and vision for a new missional community in our inner city context was received with great enthusiasm and participation.  However, as the initial fervour cooled, as it inevitably must, we realized that discipline and commitment were then necessary to keep the community healthy and growing in maturity.  Again, all of this is expected and natural.  However, despite how many affirm that we want to be a community of leaders who share the responsibility of the work of mission equally, functionally people still assume hierarchical leadership, leaving it to the few (or the one) to get things done when they are not able.

As I’ve dug deeper, I began to see a common thread: we all too often view our involvement in missional church community through the lens of volunteerism.  In other words, we love the vision and reality of ministry and want to be involved, as long as it fits.  We have discipled entire generations of Christians to see missional engagement as a voluntary opportunity they can add to their lives when it works or isn’t too demanding.  This isn’t to say that many people don’t live sacrificially, but rather that the general trend reflects an attitude of optionality.

What will change this?  How can we get from a place where the intellectual conviction about the nature of  missional-incarnational communities of faith translates into our instinctual default in every day choice (and perhaps especially in times of stress)?  In many ways, trying to make it work without that shift of worldview feels like taking my dog to the auto mechanic for surgery!  How to bring about that change of understanding- a change that gives rise to a shift in action, a true praxis- is something that has become the focus of my energies lately.

While volunteerism has great value, even in the Church, it cannot be allowed to remain as a central model for Christian life and service.  The individualism and consumerism that shapes how we participate in volunteering are incompatible with the selfless, all-demanding devotion that Christ calls for in participating in His mission.  I am not suggesting that such devotion is best expressed in programs or ministry events, but rather that work of the mission of God is immediate and demanding, requiring every believer to participate in the costly commitment of a mutually owned vocation and responsibility.

When Jesus said that the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few, He was not suggesting that there were few Christians and many needing to be saved.  Rather, He was exposing the reality that, in the face of all who call claim to be people of God, very few have proven willing to pay the price and live the lives of service and mission in the context of His community, the Church.  We need to see a shift if our worldview (and thus in our approach to spiritual and missional formation) if we are going to address this problem.

What can be done?  What have you seen that works? I am not asking this question out of some academic curiosity, but as someone who feels the threat of burn out at the peripheral of my life.  Let me know what you think.

(What does a disciple look like?  Check out my series on the Sermon on the Mount here.)

Previous Post – Fitch & Nelson – Part 2

The third & final installment of the conversation between David Fitch (Northern Seminary) and Gary Nelson (Tyndale University College and Seminary) is up.  Here they discuss the realities of pastoring in a post-Christendom context.  They have some great insights, so check them out:

Pastors in Post-Christendom from Bill Kinnon on Vimeo.

]]> http://www.missional.ca/2010/10/fitch-nelson-3/feed/ 1 http://www.missional.ca/2010/07/missional-monks/ http://www.missional.ca/2010/07/missional-monks/#comments Thu, 08 Jul 2010 14:47:03 +0000 Jamie http://www.missional.ca/?p=1063

Previous Post – Missional Maturity

Not to long ago I was contacted by Chris Chappotin and Bret Wells, both a part of Christ Journey.  They are also the creators and hosts of the new podcast, Missional Monks.  While explore what it meant to be missional Christians shaped by monastic rhythms in their context, they decided to have conversations with like minded women & men around the country & world, and they decided to share those conversations with us!  I felt honoured that they wanted to hear about our journey at Little Flowers Community.

You can hear my interview right here.  In it I share my own journey from rural life in northwestern Ontario to my current home in Winnipeg’s inner city West End neighbourhood.  I also shared how Little Flowers Community was born out of the relationships with our neighbours, shaped by the Franciscan & Anabaptist traditions.  I really hope you will take the time to check it out.  Feel free to fire me any questions you might have as a result.

There are currently three other podcasts available in the growing series, including interviews with JR Woodward (who blogs excellently here) and Elaine Heath of Southern Methodist University, as well as the excellent introductory podcast by the hosts.  There is also a great line up of future guests, so subscribe to them here or follow them on Twitter.  They are off to an amazing start and well worth following in the future!