#rv8 and Renov8 Michael Krahn on 21 Nov 2009 12:05 am
Howard Lawrence & Karen Wilk – “Neighborhood Life” (Renov8 #rv8)
(All of my posts from Renov8 can be found here)
The session started out with Howard explaining the following. I say “explaining” but really he proceeded under the assumption that we were all familiar with this, and all that was needed was a review… so I’m not entirely sure about the source of the ideas:
| Old Story | - “The incredible shrinking gospel” - Belief centered: There are ideas we need to believe and when we believe them we will enter the kingdom of heaven in the end - Kingdom of God as heaven - “Who’s in and who’s out?” thinking = “Who believes = who’s in” - Need structures where we can teach these beliefs - Point of church is to get more people to believe these beliefs |
| New Story | - “reunderstanding” the gospel in a new way - Our role is to discern what God is up to in any given context - The gospel is some version of whatever the dream of God is. Shalom is the dream of God. - How do I discern what God is up to? |
The terminology in this talk was similar to that in the Stuart Murray & Julie Kilpin session right before it. There, non-churchgoing people in through whom God is already working were called “Shalom Seekers”; here they are called “Kingdom Seekers”.
What is urgently needed, he insists, is a renewed theological vision of the church. In the Q&A afterward Stuart Murray says that he wishes church planters were more “theologically daring”. I don’t understand what this means. Is the offense of the Gospel and the potential of being hated by the world not daring enough?
They then led us through an exercise (actually borrowed from Bill Hybel’s “Just Walk Across The Room” – shhhhhhhh) to map the houses on our streets and name the people in them, the names of their kids, their vocation, their spiritual state, etc. This is a valid exercise that makes a salient point. We were on our way to doing this on the street we just moved from and we need to do a little better on our new street.
How do we represent the reign of God to the world? How do we live into what God is doing?
Before it is called to do anything, the church is called to be a community. We MUST first be a community.
Howard says: “We degrade non-believers by calling them ‘the world’.” Really? Because that’s what the bible calls those who are serving the passions of the flesh and not the will of God. Strange.
The rationale seems to be that if you do something good and “Kingdom Seekers” join in, they are doing the work of the kingdom. Anyone who will join in with things we are doing for Jesus are “Kingdom Seekers”. Will have to chew on that one for a bit.
“Instead of doing community in the church, let’s do church in the community.” I like this idea. There is a common thought in many sessions that communities of faith should be geographical. This needs some consideration but seems to be a biblical way to go.
Good Living in Your Neighborhood
1. Identify your nhood and dwell
2. Discover the Kingdom Seekers and eat with them
3. Discern what God’s up to and participate in it
4. Gather with others who are doing this
In this session, people were categorized as “Christians” and “Kingdom Seekers”. This was confusing enough but then Karen Wilk seemed to start using the terms interchangeably. I tried to get a question in but they didn’t acknowledge.
So as far as categories go (and yes, I know I’m a bad boy for trying to categorize people) what are the options?
1. Christians, Kingdom Seekers, and Other ?
2. Kingdom Seekers – Christians, Kingdom Seekers – non-Christians, Other?
3. All Kingdom Seekers?
I’m really not sure… and this was the least effective workshop I went to. Questions were avoided, unanswered, and the material was presented as if made up on the spot. Maybe it was.
Michael Krahn (michael.krahn@gmail.com) is a husband, father, Pastor, writer, and recording artist who enjoys books, theology, technology and the Ottawa Senators.
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Buzz it!
on 22 Nov 2009 at 5:53 pm # Howard Lawrence
Michael, thank you for your comments regarding our presentation.
The “explaining” that I entered in to comes from the missional church conversation. The refrence text edited by D.Guder is one source of the reframing of the gospel in what many are calling a more robust understanding of the good news that Jesus preached. This is important to note in that this is this starting point of many of the conversation topics that we were hearing at the Congress. It should be no surprise that as we root our discussions in this new ouderstanding of the Gospel Story that our language will be similar as was the case with Stuart Murray and Julie Kilpins language and mine. I was however amazed at the confluence of theme and language throughout the congress and was particularly affirmed when from across the ocean came language almost exactly like ours to discribe such important concepts. I see God at work in this.
With refrence to “Shalom or Kingdom seekers” this discription of a person who may or may not be a follower of Jesus but is seeking “Gods Dream of reconciliation and beauty” arises out of this new understanding of the Gospel. This kingdom seeking impulse is key to ministering in our world. It is particularly important to the agenda for ministry in the neighbourhood in that seeking the kingdom of God together with our neighbours is exchanged for the old stories agenda of “getting them saved” into heaven supported by active worship service attendance. These two valid ideas are nuanced by the former.
I am glad that you like Randy Frazee’s idea of “instead of doing community in Church, lets do Church in the community” or neighbourhood. The rethink of the Gospel which we began discussing leads us to many new conversation topics as we witnessed at the Congress, but most importantly it is and will lead us to new practices and eventually to new institutional expressions of the church. Ultimatly it was here that Karen and I wanted to land. I agree that we were a little shaky here because I got caught up in theological conversation on the way. This was not in the plan. In reflection I wish that we would have just started with the stories of the exciting work of church planting we are seeing done in neighbourhoods by capable lay people.
This was a great congress and with many great presentations.
So to be rated by you as “the least effective” may still stand us in good stead. Perhaps blogging with you for clarity will bring more effectivness.
Thanks for your work,
Howard
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