Previous Post – Chiara House Announcement

With September here, we are gearing up here for our next Justice Discipleship Training School (JDTS).  Many people who know me from my blog or Little Flowers Community are often surprised to find out that I have been working with Youth With A Mission (YWAM) for 16 years.  I acknowledge that with YWAM being as big as it is and now 50 years old, there are a fair number of horror stories floating around out there.  Without denying this reality, I cannot overstate how passionately I believe in our JDTS.

For 5 months, a small group of students live with us in Winnipeg’s inner city, share life and ministry with us while participating in missional formation with the emphasis on God’s call for His people to “do justice”.  This year the team will be heading off to work with some of the relief work in Haiti in January/February, which we are very excited to be partnering with.  It is shaping up to be a great school!

We still have a few spots available, so if you are interested (or know someone who is), please connect with us ASAP.  The program runs from September 27th 2010- February 25th 2011 (with a two week break for Christmas).

We look forward to hearing from ya!

Previous Post – Believing, Belonging & Behaving

I’ve been hinting at this off and on of late, but now am very excited to official announce our plans!  The following is the exciting new vision that we are beginning to pursue at Little Flowers Community.  We need people to join us in making this happen.  If you are interested, please drop me a line at info@littleflowers.ca

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Chiara House will be an extension of the ministry of Little Flowers Community & YWAM Urban Ministries Winnipeg. The values of these ministries shape & define the values & practices of Chiara House. While some core members will be part of these communities, such involvement will not be required of all those participating in Chiara House.  It will not be a shelter, detox program, food bank, etc. Rather it is a group of people called to love God & their neighbours together in the context of shared life & community.

Chiara House residents will be represented in three general groups:

• Long Term Members
  Long term members will be people with a commitment to specific Rule of Life and code of conduct, willing to commit to a specific time frame and function as servant-leaders in the community house.  These members can include, but are the restricted to, member of Little Flowers Community/YWAM.  All members will be employed outside of the house.
• Transitional Members
  The house will also welcome short-term, goal-oriented transitional housing for locals facing specific challenges. These members will be drawn through relationship and/or referral from other ministries or social agencies. A clear & legal application process would be in place to screen applicants for appropriate fit in the program.
• Internship Members
  A missional formation internship, with both short & long-term options, will also be made available, through the model of a missional-monastic order. These members will be primarily focused on young single adults, such as university students, who are seeking community and missional formation while studying, working, etc. in their own context.

(A clear Rule of Life will be articulated for long-term members, with an appropriate covenant commitment for interns, and a Code of Conduct for all residents.)

The nature of the building Chiara House ends up in inevitably shape the nature of the housing, but the following is a general overview of the ideal setting for such a community. Chiara House would ideally be set in a multi-storied (3+) building. Each floor would have controlled access.

On the main level would be a more open community space for shared programs, community gatherings, worship, training, etc. Ultimately it would be set up like a “community living room”, with access to public bathrooms, a kitchen and possibly a small hospitality room for short-term guests or emergency housing.

The second floor would be broken into group community units housing 4-6 people per unit. They would share access to the living room, dining room & bathrooms (expanded to accommodate larger numbers), but would have secured individual or roommates space for sleeping. These spaces would be designed for long-term members to share life with transitional housing members (ideally 50/50).

The third floor of the building would be designed similarly to second floor model, but would be dedicated to shared life with the missional formation members, with at least one long-term member as well. They would have relationship and shared activity with the transitional housing members, but due to the shorter-term nature of their involvement, would have to apply for living in that portion of the house.

Depending on the size of the building, every (or selected or one floor) could also have traditional apartment suites designed for families, allowing the security & space for family life, while allowing families to share life with the singles in Chiara House. The option of a family unit for transitional housing is also an option to consider.

Every member would contribute equally to the room & board of the community, though some members may be given a reduction for fulfilling certain duties (i.e caretaker, etc.). The long-term members, along with the Little Flowers Community/YWAM UMW leadership, will function as the servant-leadership team of Chiara House. However, whenever possible, all members will be encouraged to participate in shared responsibility & community leadership.

Previous Post – Reflections on my YWAM Family

As I mentioned in my previous post, I spent last week with the staff of YWAM Canada at our national staff conference in Pinawa, MB.  In addition to it being a great time of connecting and refreshing, it was also a time for us to collective challenge one another, asking the difficult questions that face us when we actively seek to live Christ together for the purpose of His mission.  In many of those discussions, especially on what it means to be an inclusive and embracing people, we quite often came to a place where someone would say, “Ok, but where do we draw the line?”

This question all too often left me frustrated, as though we were asking the wrong question.  This is not to say that the underlying concern of this question is not important.  I do believe that inclusion and embrace inevitably must have boundaries.  The question, though, is how and where and what is involved in setting those boundaries in place.  All too often we feel we have to start with a line, start with a set of deal-breakers which people have to adhere to (or at least acknowledge) before they can meaningfully belong to the community of faith.  I think this goes against the heart of how Jesus embodied these dynamics.

When asked to explain it another way at the conference, I decided to try and communicate through an analogy.  The following is what I came up with on the spot.  Now, before we start taking this to extremes, I acknowledge that this is an imperfect analogy in many ways, but it provides a simply touchstone (icon, if you will) into the deeper dynamics.  So bear with me.

In Mark 9, when Jesus responds to the man whose son was being tormented by an evil spirit, the man declares, “I do believe; help my unbelief.”  Here we see a person who clearly believes in Christ and His authority to heal his son.  Yet he also acknowledges that he needs to be saved from his unbelief.  To me this is the mustard seed, the seed of belief.  Belief as seed says a great deal- it is a tiny medium of promise and potential.  It holds within it the potential for something far great than itself.  A seed on its own is nothing.  A seed must be planted.

Often it is here that we presume that belief plants itself in our hearts, and while there is an element of truth there, the soil in which seed of belief will sprout new life in Christ.  Like a seed, we must die to our sin-isolated selves before we can spring to new life in Christ.  Here is where the shift in our thinking takes place, because again we are prone to look at our salvation in Christ through purely individualistic terms.  Rather, Jesus has (by the Holy Spirit) made the Church His Body.  Therefore, it is in the soil of belonging in the embrace of true community that the seed of belief can be reborn to new life.  Unless that seed has the life-giving, life-sustaining soil in which to plant, we cannot expect it transform.

As the seed of belief does sprout new life in the soil of belonging, it begins to be shaped DNA inherent in the seed.  It is being raised into the image of the resurrected Christ while also being restored to its intended nature of being created in God’s image.  It spreads its roots in the soil of belonging and sprouts into the world as the flower it was meant to be.  As clumsy as the term might sound, here I call this the flower of behaviour.  The flower acts and grows and reproduces according to its nature (again Christ).  It did not have to behave like a flower into order to belong, but rather it was only able to be a flower after it had been embraced, rooted and nurtured in the context of belonging.

So where are the boundaries?  Unlike seeds and flowers, our free will means that we do make choices that go against the intentions of God, that our behaviour doesn’t reflect the DNA of Christ reborn within us.  However, this understanding teaches us that the for new life to be born, we have to accept a degree of uncertainty when embracing people with “unflowered” belief.  Jesus did not teach us that we need to examine each seed before we plant it, He said we will know the nature of the seed by the nature of the fruit it produces.  This demands that we allow fruit to be produced first.  This is risky.  This is messy.  This is complicated.  It is necessary.

Further, this forces us to realize that the nature and quality of the soil should be one of first and primary concerns.  So often we spend so much time and energy requiring behaviour of people before they can be accepted into our communities.  Rather, we must be looking to the planks in our own eyes (or the weeds, in this case), not only for our own sakes, but for the sake of the delicate seeds of belief that are seeking to take root among us.  Rather than purity-police trying to protect the integrity of what is ours, we need to see it as mothers protecting and nurturing the vulnerable new life within us.  We bear the greater responsibility at this stage.  It is our behaviour that must be held to a high standard.

I cannot help but think of the story of the woman caught in adultery who was brought for Jesus for judgment.  By the letter of the law of Moses this woman had legitimately “crossed the line”.  Her exclusion from the community was so clear that it allowed for absolute exclusion- death.  And yet Jesus does not exclude her- don’t miss how critical that is as a first response- but rather stoops down and begins to draw in the dirt.  Then He turns to the accusers- again addressing the sin of the believers before the sinner- and invites him without sin to cast the first stone, then returns to the dirt.  When He stands up again, He see that He and the woman are alone.  He asks her if no one accuses her, to which she replies that there is no one.  Then Jesus says, “Neither do I condemn you”- Jesus is the only man who could have rightfully condemned her, yet He does not- then says, “Go and sin no more”.  It is here, at the end of this process that Jesus finally address behaviour.  He knows that her behaviour is more likely to be transformed by His loving defense (at His own real risk) and embrace than through fear of the the judgment of the law, legitimate as it may be.

Where do we draw the line?  Sometimes, when I read the story of Jesus and this woman, I imagine that when Jesus stoops down that He was drawing a line in the sand.  He drew a line in the sand between the accusers and the woman.  And He stood on her side of the line.

Where do we draw the line?  Why do we draw the line?

Previous Post – A Wordle In Progress

I generally find that when I blog about Youth With A Mission (YWAM) here, people are less likely to read.  I’ve asked a few people about this, with some interesting feedback.  Many express surprise that I am a missional minded Christian, yet part of an organization like YWAM.  Many cite stories and experiences they have had that show YWAM’s failings and weaknesses.  Many are legitimate stories, as we are a flawed community like all others.  However, YWAM- especially in the YWAM Canada format context that I know best- more often than not defies these isolated incidences.

This past week, my wife & I, along with all of our staff (most of which we share life with in intentional community) headed out to Pinawa, MB for the YWAM Canada Rendezvous, our national staff conference held every 2 years.   In addition to hearing about the innovative and deeply incarnational models of ministry emerging both locally & globally through our various centres, the workshops led by our national staff (many young leaders) revealed a depth and emphasis that is often unseen.  Topics such as environmentalism & mission; justice & responsible engagement with poverty & colonialism; missional-incarnational church planting; stories about justice & First Nations communities; etc. There were sessions on helping us better understand and engage practices such as centering prayer and Lectio Divina.

The diversity of our community was also thrilling.  With a large portion of our French Canadian staff attending, as well as a strong showing from our Korean ministries, we dedicated to have all sessions translated- and not simply from English to French/Korean, but with English being the secondary language at times.  This may sound like a small thing, but it was/is far more spiritually significant than many realize.  There were also people of all ages, from babies to seniors and everything in between.  And there was a deep sense of connectedness and true family.

YWAM is not without its faults.  However, most people outside of the mission largely see or hear about situations that are exceptionally noticeable.  Some expressions of YWAM, due to their cultural centrality and more significant availability of resources (and thus communications), get far more time in the spotlight than is reflective of our international family.  YWAM turns 50 years old this year and it should not be ignored that throughout that history we took (often unwelcome) stances on issues that today are just beginning to be addressed in many circles.  YWAM has always affirmed that women can and are called into any and every kind of leadership in ministry & the Church.  YWAM has always affirmed that ones race or nationality does not make them more likely to be the “recipient of missions”, but that God calls all people from all nations to the nations for His purposes.  YWAM has practiced a counter-cultural emphasis on community, simplicity and missionality long before the ideas were “popular”.

Again, none of this denies the challenges that we have and continue to face as a mission.  However, I hope people will begin to realize that YWAM represents a 50 year history of people who have given up almost everything to radically follow the call of Christ in their lives.  YWAM Canada, I believe, is particularly poised and engaged in the unique challenges of post-Christendom.  This is why I am such a PASSIONATE advocate for our Justice Discipleship Training School (JDTS), which has a few more openings in it.  Finally, the emphasis on missionality has returned our focus on the local, sadly sometimes to the exclusions of our global vocation.  YWAM and other such organizations are truly gifts to the church to help keep that balance in place.

While not the highlight of my entire retreat, the following video was thrilling for me.  Growing up in a rural hunting region, I would NEVER have fed a wild deer.  However, the region we were in was protected and so the deer represented a few generations of human-adapted herds.  So no harm done and I was able to experience something of a Franciscan moment:

Oh deer! from Jamie Arpin-Ricci on Vimeo.

I am about 3/4’s of the way through writing my book on the Sermon on the Mount, which is really exciting.  I decided to throw the text into Wordle and share it with you.  Click on the image to get a better look.  Enjoy!

]]> http://www.missional.ca/2010/08/wordle/feed/ 5 http://www.missional.ca/2010/08/phileena-heuertz/ http://www.missional.ca/2010/08/phileena-heuertz/#comments Thu, 12 Aug 2010 14:44:18 +0000 Jamie http://www.missional.ca/?p=1084

Previous Post – Prayers For Living Into God’s World

Living & working in the context I do, the hard work of missional community & activism with the marginalized lives in difficult tension with the need to a life of disciplined spirituality, of contemplation.  It is, perhaps, the single deepest challenge I face in my role in community.  That is why Phileena Heuertz’s new book “Pilgrimage of a Soul: Contemplative Spirituality for the Active Life” is a powerful gift to the Body of Christ.  Speaking beautifully, personally & authoritatively from her own experience, Phileena manages to write a book that will speak to the inactive contemplative and the un-contemplative activist.  In other words, it speaks to every Christians.

In case you haven’t heard of Phileena (and if you haven’t, get familiar with her, because she is an important voice in the Church today), here is her brief bio from IVPress:

Phileena Heuertz is one of the leading directors of Word Made Flesh (WMF)–an international community serving Christ among the most vulnerable of the world’s poor.

Over the years, Phileena has traveled through nearly 70 countries working with marginalized and oppressed people–abandoned children, victims of HIV and AIDS, sexually exploited women and children, people recovering from drug addictions, children who live on the streets, refugees and children of combat and war.

Since 1995, Phileena has served WMF through child advocacy, community care and leadership development. In 2004 she founded the Community Care Center-one of the internal support offices for the international movement. Phileena believes that union of action and contemplation is crucial to ongoing personal transformation, healthy community life, and sustainable, authentic social justice efforts. Phileena’s responsibilities require her attention in the international office in Omaha, Nebraska, as well as in the WMF communities across the globe.

“Pilgrimage of a Soul” is another gem from IVPress (who sent me the book gratis) in their Likewise Books imprint.  I had the privilege to interview Phileena about the book, so hear what she has to say in her own words.  Then order the book today!

Jamie Arpin-Ricci: The subtitle of your book is “Contemplative Spirituality for the Active Life”.  For some people this might seem like an odd fit.  Why do you think it is so critical to bring these two dynamics together?

PH: It is critical to bring together contemplation and action because one purifies and authenticates the other. True contemplation will necessarily bear fruit in activism. Faith without works is dead.

JAR: You decided to explore this topic in a very personal way.  Why did you choose to do so through storytelling?  How will this change the experience for the reader?

PH: Using narrative of my sabbatical year—making pilgrimage in Spain and then in solitude at Duke has a way of making very deep and in some ways abstract spiritual truths more concrete and tangible for the reader.

JAR: Many Christians, while inspired by the life you have followed Christ into, might feel that they will never live the kind of life you lead.  While I don’t need convincing, convince those readers what you book has to offer them.

PH: POAS will invite the reader to reflect on their personal journey and unfolding life story. The message of the book is inviting the reader into living their life authentically.

JAR: Can you very briefly explain the seven movements outlined in the book?

PH: Awakening, Longing, Darkness, Death, Transformation, Intimacy and Union are seven movements that I’ve experienced in my personal spiritual journey. I believe these movements of the soul are universal to those who are attentive to them, and they support ongoing Christian conversion and growth. These movements can certainly be found in the Scriptures, but when they are personally acknowledged and experienced, we are on our way toward living the abundant life of which Jesus so often spoke. Though we can know about these movements, the better is to experience them. Experiential knowledge is the greatest knowledge. We can argue and debate head knowledge. But who can dismiss what one experiences?

Pilgrimage of a Soul attempts to help us connect our head to our heart that we might be more aware of and experience more of the living God.

These seven movements or signposts in the journey are not really linear but more circular in nature. We could be in and out of one movement in almost any order. The spiritual journey is not so much about progressing from one point to another as it is about surrendering to ongoing transformation and union with God. These seven movements support us in that objective; and though these experiences are quite internal and symbolic, they have very concrete, external expressions in our daily life—this is the place where contemplation meets action.

To try and summarize these, “Awakening” is the point in our journey when we see more clearly particular illusions in our life—more specifically—parts of our false self that we had previously been asleep to.

“Longing” symbolizes the discontentment in us that desires more—more connection to God, self, others and the world in which we live.

“Darkness” and “Death” are the necessary experiences to bringing forth new life that we most often resist. Ancient Christian mysticism has always affirmed the gift of darkness that essentially clouds our senses of the consoling presence of God that we might be purified and grow in the spiritual faculties that relate to God on a deeper level.

Death is the experience of final surrender to the illusion(s) we’ve awakened to. Though the illusory false self is just that—an illusion—our identity clings to it all the same. To let go of it is frightening because it’s all we’ve known and we are less acquainted with the true self (if acquainted at all). So there is no comfort in what is coming—it is too unknown to us. Death (in the spiritual journey and the final material death when our body dies) is the ultimate act of faith because it is a final gesture of trust and love in the One who is greater than us and knows us better than we know ourselves. By surrendering to death of our illusions, we trust that new life—resurrection—will come, though we have no concrete guarantee of it.

“Transformation” then is that long, hoped-for new life. Transformation is the period of living into greater truth; living into greater awareness of the true self.

“Intimacy” is the experience of growing deeper in love with God, self, others and the world. Anxieties, turmoil, defense mechanisms, pretensions and pathologies that previously plagued us have been settled, healed and we are freer to know (God, self, others, the world) and be known (by God, self, others, the world).

“Union” is the experience of the fragmented parts of ourselves (identity, confused perceptions of God, broken relationships, misaligned vocation) coming together. In union we experience these previously broken places now restored, redeemed, made whole. We experience greater centeredness in the love of God—which permeates all of our life actions.

JAR: Was there anything in the book you wanted to include, but couldn’t?  Tell us about it.

PH: Interesting question! Actually I’m very satisfied with the content of the book. There wasn’t anything I wanted to include that was edited out. David Zimmerman, my editor at IVP, was really committed to ensuring my voice, heart and desires for the book came through during the editing process.

JAR: David is my editor as well and that has been my experience with him as well, so that is encouraging!  Tell us something odd & unique about yourself that few people would know about.

PH: So funny! I tend to be an open book—especially now with the release of a very intimate unveiling of my life in POAS. Hmmm odd and unique? You’ve really stumped me. Maybe you should ask my husband!

JAR: Thanks Phileena.

After years of doing spiritual & missional formation with college age Christians, one of the trends that stands out is the struggle many have with communal prayer.  While I still affirm times of open group prayer, I have also noticed that many struggle with performing their prayers, while others remained silent for lack of “inspiration” or because they felt their prayers inadequate compared to the more eloquent prayers.  These and other reasons contributed to a difficult challenge in our community.

It was while we were exploring these challenges a few years ago that Christine Sine contacted me about reading an early draft of her new book “Light for the Journey: Morning & Evening Prayers for Living into God’s World”.  This collection of morning & evening prayers, laid out to cover a full week, take us through different emphases of faith in reflective and creative ways.  With her permission, we adapted the prayers for use in our community as an experiment.  Since then, they have become a fixed part of our community life, as well as for many of our personal times of private prayer.  It was and is a real gift to us.

I was excited to learn that “Light for the Journey” is now available for order through Mustard Seed Associates.  I highly recommend this resource to you and to your communities.  Born out of their own life in share community, the tested authenticity of the material is clear throughout.  Christine briefly explains each theme (from the introduction):

Sunday’s theme begins the week with the celebration of Sabbath and anticipation of God’s eternal shalom world. We rejoice in this vision of wholeness and abundance which will one day be completely fulfilled in Christ.

On Monday we focus on our restored relationship to God our Creator and the call to be stewards of God’s creation. The gospel always comes to us in the midst of the created world, which was made through Jesus Christ and is being recreated through him.

On Tuesday our focus shifts to Christ our Savior and what it means to carry his incarnational presence into our world. As Christ’s followers, we are called to live out the claims of the gospel.

Wednesday focuses on the in-dwelling Holy Spirit who equips us with the gifts and abilities to carry out the gospel call as God’s servants and proclaimers of God’s resurrection- created world.

On Thursday our reflections turn towards community and what it means to be part of God’s eternal family from every tribe and nation, rich and poor, male and female.

Friday reflects on the Cross and the wholeness achieved through repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation.

We conclude the week on Saturday with a focus on the kingdom of God and the clouds of witnesses who have gone before us.

Phyllis Tickle, author of “The Great Emergence”, had this to say about the book:

“In the history of Christian formation literature, it has consistently been the small volume that has conveyed the greatest worth. That principle nowhere holds more true than it does here. Like the light which its title references, this manual, in its succinctness, travels broadly and illumines perfectly. Presenting both assigned prayers for each day of the week and also rich instruction in how the Christian forms a life of prayer, Sine speaks to us gently, but authoritatively. There is, in all of this, a kind of poignancy as well. We understand that Sine is writing to us not about some theory, but out of experience and about the sure knowledge of a life of prayer fully lived. Like every wise Christian teacher before her, Christine Sine understands—and persuades us—that it is in community that Christians pray most formatively and in community that we must seek to pray.”

Head over to Mustard Seed Associates and order a copy (or 10!) today.  It is well worth it.

Previous Post – Christ, the Other & Anne Rice

Recently, several people have mentioned our frequent use of Micah 6:8 in our materials.  They wondered if it was just because it was a popular verse on justice or if we had really thought through what it means to us.  It is a good question, because it is a very significant and formational verse for our ministry.  The verse says:

“He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you?  To justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

While I won’t develop it in detail here, we read this text through the lens of Jesus’ Great Commandment, to love God with all of who & what we are, and to love others as ourselves.  Jesus said this was the fulfillment of the whole Law & the Prophets.  The Law & the Prophets represented righteousness & justice-right relationship with God and right relationship with others.  So doing justice is at the heart of God’s ultimate intentions, at the heart of the Gospel.

Through that lens, we read Micah 6:8.  Our commitment to “do justice” means that we are committed to both serve with those impacted by the injustice and to address the root of the injustice.  Therefore, there is a degree of prophetic confrontation and activism inherent to doing justice.  We believe that the justice of God is primarily restorative, so our activism is deeply peace-based and non-retributive.  This commitment reminds us that God’s Kingdom is breaking forth into the brokenness of the current world, not just being concerned with a spiritual after-life.

Our commitment to “love mercy” orientates the focus of our justice efforts to be primarily motivated by loving desire for restoration, not condemnation.  Demonstrating compassion and mercy is a critical expression of the loving Gospel of Christ.  Feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, comforting the mourning- these are at the heart of God, so they should be at our heart as well.  However, mercy reminds us also of God’s merciful grace for us, so we must also approach the perpetrators of injustice with mercy as well (though not compromising justice).  God’s justice seeks to restore all relationships, because that is the nature of His grace.  So too should it be reflected in our commitment.

Finally, our commitment to “walk humbly” reminds us that we are also often complicit in the injustices others suffer.  Whether knowingly or not, how we spend our money, where we choose to live and work, how we use our privilege (be it racial, gender, economics, etc.) are connected to the realities of our increasingly small world.  We must have the humility to acknowledge, repent and change when necessary.  Colonial mentalities still shape well intentioned missions and ministry, which must be continually addressed.  Further, this humility reminds us that we are participating in God’s redemptive work that is essential for our own salvation.  We are not coming as the great hope for the poor, but we come, in the words of Lilla Watson, because our liberation is caught up with theirs.

This three-fold understanding of Micah 6:8 is central in shaping our Justice Discipleship Training School (JDTS).  We are aware of the dangers of short-term missions and maximize the experience to avoid those dangers (NOTE: Our JDTS is significantly committed to the important lessons learned from the book “When Helping Hurts”.  It shapes the nature of our program).  We are still looking for a few more students interested in participating in this program.  Check it out.

Does this resonate with you?  Do you understand Micah 6:8 differently?  What place does justice have in the Gospel?

Previous Post – Being Missional in a Culture of Compromise

When I first discovered that Anne Rice, famed author of the dark Vampire Chronicles, was doing a series of novels on the life of Jesus, I was intrigued.  I soon learned that in the process of researching and writing the books she was compelling and wooed back into the life of faith, returning to the Roman Catholicism of her youth.  I even interviewed her at about her books of Christ and her return to faith.  She shocked millions of fans and critics alike with this move.

Recently, Anne has again got thousands abuzz with her recent public comments on Facebook:

“For those who care, and I understand if you don’t: Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being “Christian” or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to “belong” to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.”

Then again later:

“As I said below, I quit being a Christian. I’m out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.”

As I read her words, I felt deeply for Anne.  After all, many of us share her struggle to identify with a religion that so often seems to distant from the teachings of the Lord whose name it bears.  And while I am frequently drawn to the writings and examples of Catholic women & men (namely, St. Claire & Francis of Assisi), I can also see why the Roman Catholic expression of faith would be particularly difficult for Rice.

Her comments brought to mind something I had read from Cornell West recently.  West commented that, in terms of identification with others, especially those who faced injustice and persecution, he explicitly calls himself the other.  In other words, in the face of anti-Islamic attitudes post-9/11, he said “I am Arab American” or to the way the church or culture treats the LGBTQ community, he said “I am gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual”.  Like Rice, he refused to let his identification as a Christian make him separate than his sister and brothers.  Rice refuses to be identified with the hatred and bigotry she sees in the institutional church and West refuses to deny identification with this rejected by the same.

While I differ with Rice & West in many details surrounding this crisis of identification, I do resonate with much of their unique (and overlapping) emphases.   I struggle in my own life and in the life of my community to offer an alternative vision and/or experience of Christ to a world that often only sees self-righteousness, judgment and violence.  I am passionately committed to recognize that my identity, my very salvation is caught up with that of others, even those who Christians traditionally reject as outsiders.  In this, I affirm what these two are modeling in these statements and in their lives.

However, I am caught on something I can’t get past.  While in no way diminishing the prophetic authority of Rice & West in this respect, I cannot help be realize that Christ takes this radical identification even further.  Jesus condescended to become human, giving up His rightful place and power, to identify with us so that we could receive the grace of salvation through His life, death and resurrection.  “While we were yet sinners”- in other words, before we accepted or even acknowledged His gift, He suffered and died for the hope of our salvation.  Jesus identified with all humankind without exception.

This is the identification that Christ calls us to follow.  It is a radical and impossible identification that is only possible by His Holy Spirit.  It is an identification that, while never compromising or ignoring injustice, extends a love that surpasses familial loyalty even to those who despise and reject it.  It is an indiscriminate identification that is no respecter of persons.  It is an identification that is willing to also say, “I am a bigot”, “I am a homophobe”, “I am a racist”, “I am a misogynist” and “I am the worst of sinners”.

Because Christ identifies with everyone, even in their most horrific sinfulness, then we too, as His Body, must also identify with them.  We do not have the luxury to deny their sisterhood and brotherhood, while also never ignoring or justifying their hatred and sin.  The Body of Christ is one, like it or not.  To identify with Christ means we must identify with each other.

Lord have mercy on me, a sinner.

Previous Post -Gardening In Exile

Last night at Little Flowers Community small group we were discussing the kind of community of faith we hoped to become.  We started by reflecting on experiences with church in the past that were particularly negative and disappointing.  Then we reflected on experiences with church that stood out as positive or even exceptional, asking what was required for those experiences to be possible.  Finally we examined what the different examples had in common.  In the end, we were able to clearly see, not only what we hoped to become as a community together, but what it would cost each of us to get there.  Our answers were calling us to give more time, energy, consistency, priority, sacrifice- things that seemed obvious but were important to be reminded of.

At one point, it came up that people would more involved if we were doing more in the community- outreach of some kind.  After all, they said, they had been involved off and on in a number of other ministries in the city that had been great.  While they were right to affirm this direction, I found myself sighing with frustration.  This was a conversation I seemed destined to repeat over and over again.  As positively as I could, I affirmed the suggestion and asked: “So what are you waiting for?”

When push came to shove, the answer came down to this: they were waiting for someone to start the ministry so that they could join in.  And this was a problem for me on several levels.  First, “someone” almost always referred to myself or my wife.  Now, the fact that we are career missionaries with many years of experience gives the expectation some credibility.  However, our experience has also been that people also want others to lead so that their involvement could be based on their convenience.  In other words, when it wasn’t convenient, the “leaders” would be left to fill in the gap themselves.  Our small missionary team (which had planted Little Flowers Community and continues to work full time in the neighbourhood) tried this before and led the group to near-burn out.

Second, and most importantly, this pattern inevitably discipled those some-time volunteers in an experience of missional engagement that was divorced from the nitty-gritty, mundane aspects of ministry.  By allowing people too much access to missional context with requiring them to carry the cost creates the illusion of missional living that can proved dangerous to all involved.  Of course, I am well aware of how such a pattern has emerged.  While some might blame it on influences such as “short term missions” (a claim with some, but less truth than most people might imagine), it has more often been born of desperation and necessity.  Let me explain.

The ability to get people to meaningfully and sacrificially engage in lives of missional service is very, very hard.  We live in a culture of consumer Christianity where people have to be convinced (sold) on an idea or activity.  Even then, their participation and/or support is seen as their exceptional contribution rather than the base-line for required service.  However, the need for people to be involved continues to grow, especially in contexts where the needs are so severe and the resources so scarce (such as in our inner city context).  Therefore, in order to bring the needed people in, we accommodate or even compromise.  One way of doing that is to do all the “behind the scenes”, mundane work so that people can in and participate in the more dynamic aspects of ministry that interest them.

This needs to stop.  By doing this we are actively discipling people into a way of Christian service the affirms and entrenches the individualistic, consumer-driven impulses of our culture.  Further, it creates an illusion of what it means to be missional people that in the end is little more than a shell of the sacred vocation that God calls us to.  Of course God, in His grace, will work through these situations in spite of us.  And of course the the unique gifts of some will predispose them to certain roles and not others.  However, these points do not mitigate the danger and compromise of the approach that is all too common.

What scares me most about this is the fact that, whenever we resist this impulse, we find ourselves standing quite alone.  The Dusty Cover, the ministry that gave birth to Little Flowers Community, had to be closed due to a lack of people willing to consistently and selflessly serve.  By requiring even a little more from people, we’ve seen many move on to more accommodating ministries.  It is discouraging, disheartening and more than a little disturbing.

I am grateful that the core group of people in Little Flowers Community are beginning to see this.  It is particularly difficult for single 20-somethings (who make up the majority of our church) to realize this and adjust to it.  However, the harvest is plentiful and the workers are few.  Has the familiarity with that truth numbed us to the urgency of its message?  We need to begin to require more of ourselves and each other.  We need to resist compromising and begin to call ourselves back to the radical vocation of being the community of Christ, a community called daily to lives of sacrifice, even unto the cross.

What do you think?  Is this a problem for your community?  How do we change this?