What Discipling Communities Can Do...

Simple network drawing. Public domain.

This post is a companion to the previous one-- The 4 Core Competencies of Christian Congregations (Plus 1 More for Methodist/Missional Congregations. It is meant to be read and used as a tool for assessment and planning  alongside it. The connecting links between the two are Competency 5 for Methodist/Missional Congregations and Competency 4 here-- as one of the "nodes" discipling communities seek to connect persons with is a local congregation.

Why separate "competency charts" for congregations and Discipling Communities? Because these two different kinds of Christian community are exactly that-- two different kinds of Christian community designed to accomplish different things. And we need them both-- and more besides-- to experience and express the fulness of what it means to "be  for the world the body of Christ redeemed by his blood." Congregations provide a platform for discipleship. Discipling communities, such as the Methodist Societies with their class meetings, bands, society meetings and other forms of community action and connection, give people the hands-on experience with discipleship to Jesus that truly helps them grow in holiness of heart and life.

This chart is not a "neat" as the previous one, I admit. I was able to develop color coding and even acronyms for the 4+1 competencies of congregations. So far, at least, I've not been able to come up with pnemonics that work quite that way for Discipling Communities.

But that may not be such a bad thing. What I do have is at least some attempt to clarify what each of the competencies is, and what it means (as well as has meant historically, with early Methodists as a primary guide). My sense is we may have become so unfamiliar with or in some cases suspicious of Discipling Communities as separate from congregations that perhaps the best first work we can do is be clear about what these are, and aren't.

I present neither of these outlines as a final product, but rather as a work in progress to help Methodist and other self-identifying Missional congregations and existing or newly created Discipling communities find each other, claim their own strengths and capacities, and help each other perform them accountably with each other.

Church in the Methodist/Missional way is ultimately network, not hub and spokes. Congregations and Discipling Communities make up the two perhaps most significant hubs of this network, with a whole variety of other kinds of Christian ministry and missional communities also in the wider network.

So... try this set of descriptions on. See how they fit. And where they don't.

And by all means share your suggestions for ways to make these tools more accurate and useful as you seek to embody the fullness of "church as network" where you are.

Peace in Christ,

Taylor Burton-Edwards

The 4 Core Competencies of Discipling Communities

1. Discipling All Serious Inquirers in the Way of Jesus

Discipling: The relationships in Discipling Communities involve intimate and "in your business" mutual challenge and support as persons with differing levels of experience listen to one another about what they are doing and learning as they seek to follow Jesus in every area of their lives. 

All Serious Inquirers: All are welcome to begin and continue the journey, provided that it is clear they are part of the Discipling Community in order to grow in faithful discipleship to Jesus, or as Wesley put it, to "attain unto that holiness without which no one shall see the Lord"

In the Way of Jesus: The baptismal covenant provides the principles for Christian discipleship and commonlife. Other documents, such as the General Rules, provide practices that help  members of Discipling Communities incarnate it.

2. Teaching the Way of Salvation in Word and Deed

Teaching: Discipling Communities have an active teaching ministry.

The Way of Salvation: While congregations teach basic Christian doctrine (the Trinity, the role of Scripture, basic teachings of Jesus, and the like), Discipling Communities place the doctrine of salvation in all its fullness as the focus of everything they teach. For Methodists, this includes specific teaching on prevenient, justifying and sanctifying grace.

In Word:  Discipling Communities regularly confess the doctrine of salvation in worship together, help their participants articulate this for themselves, friends and strangers in their own words, and actively evangelize both as groups and as individuals.

And Deed: What Discipling Communities confess with their lips they teach and actively help their members to credible with their lives.

3. Engaging the Mission of God Accountably

Engaging: The purpose and work of Discipling Communities is "to spur one another on to love and good works.

The Mission of God: The mission is God's. Discipling Communities constantly send inquirers and members into God's mission already in progress, sometimes to plant, sometimes, to harvest, sometimes to distribute, and sometimes to wait. 

Accountably: Discipling Communities provide regular-- at least weekly-- means for persons to report what they learned as they engaged or failed to engage God's mission and to support, challenge, and encourage each other to become more faithful in their work in God's fields.

4. Connecting People and Social Networks for Mission and Ministry

Connecting People: Discipling Communities, like leaders in Methodist/Missional congregations (see Congregational Competency 5)  are constantly "on the lookout" to identify people who are ready for next steps in discipleship and to connect them with appropriate face to face communities of people seeking the same ends-- discipleship to Jesus, holiness of heart and life, and perfection in love in this life.

And Social Networks: Discipling Communities make, sustain and extend the social networks of each participant in each  place, helping them cross social boundaires and find ways to connect with people in all social boundaries present.

For Mission and Ministry: Discipling Communities seek to ensure that witness to the good news of God's kingdom is happening and the gospel is being incarnated in action in every social location in their local geographical area and beyond.

So What CAN Congregations Do?

The 4 Core Competencies of Christian Congregations (+1 More for Methodists/Missionals!)

Without going into all of the historical background I might present to justify this here, I suggest there are four key things Christian congregations have organized themselves to do, and do well, since the late fourth century. 

I also include  a fifth competency for Methodist and other intentionally Missional Congregations-- or at least one we Methodists SHOULD include to embody our heritage fully: Inviting and Connecting People to Discipling Communities. I have another chart to post at another time detailing the Core Competencies of Discipling Communities.

What I am presenting here is the "outline version" of the 4 Core Competencies,  which I've actually reduced to a single page .pdf (downloadable here) to give a fairly broad yet comprehensive picture of the competencies themselves, the elements that make them up, and perhaps some indications of ways you might be able to measure your progress on each.

Core Competency 1: Offering Public Worship

Public— open and inviting to everyone in a particular place

Excellent— meets or exceeds local public standards for speaking, musical performance, and engaging the bodies and minds of participants

Accessible— to persons of varying levels of knowledge and ability

Recognizable— as being worship in the Christian tradition

Locally adapted— uses the wide variety of gifts and reflects the cultures of participants

Core Competency 2: Teaching Basic Doctrine

Confessing the faith— worship regularly confesses core elements of the faith that are remembered by participants

Living the faith— worshipers’ lives resemble what is taught and confessed in worship and other teaching venues

Articulating the faith— participants can accurately describe the core elements of the faith in their own words

Sharing the faith— participants share what they have learned with people outside the congregation

Passing on the faith— multiple systems ensure that the congregation forms newcomers and new generations in the basic teaching of the faith

Core Competency 3: Caring for Members and Participants

 

Physical Care— support for the physical needs of participants (financial, food, health, accessibility, transportation)

Ongoing Communities of Care— every participant is quickly and effectively connected with others who provide a community of basic caring and prayer

Emergency Care—  systems of communication ensure that persons in emergency situations receive appropriate and timely care

Transitional Care— intensive communities of caring for persons walking through significant transitions

Core Competency 4: Being a Reliable Institutional Player in the Local Community

Fiscal accountability — the congregation manages financial resources transparently and responsibly

Active — the congregation has or creates a history of forming effective partnerships that release the missional  capacity of the local community

Capacity — the congregation acts based on its programmatic, leadership and relational strengths

Trusted — the congregation has a good reputation among persons and other institutions in the local community

Core Competency 5 (Methodists/Missional Congregations): Inviting and Connecting People to Discipling Communities

Looks for signs ("bright eyes") that people are ready for deeper discipleship to Jesus

Invites people to consider and take next steps in discipleship to Jesus

Networks with accountable discipling communities, inside and outside the congregation, and regularly refers people to them.
 

Key leaders, including the pastor(s), are actively involved in accountable discipling communities themselves

The 4 Core Competencies of Christian Congregations Plus One More-- Copyright (c) 2012 Taylor W. Burton-Edwards for the General Board of Discipleship of The United Methodist Church

Differences Congregations Don't Make... and What to Do about It

Congregations Make Little if Any Difference in People's Lives

Image: Public Domain.

The Barna Group recently released the findings of their study called "What People Experience in Churches." A primary criterion they used to decide who could give them valid information in their otherwise random sample was whether people were "practicing Christians." They defined practicing Christians as "adults who describe themselves as Christians, attend a worship service at least once a month, and say their religious faith is very important in their life." Since attending worship was one of these criteria, I've also written a post about this study on the United Methodist Worship blog.

There, I was looking more specifically at worship practices that do or don't make differences and the kinds of differences people say worship (which is the primary common activity of congregations) actually makes.

Here, I want to look at the same data with a slightly different lens-- one that explores a significant limitation of congregations this study reveals across the board, no matter their size, tradition, or the generation (age) of the persons interviewed. 

In every case, the Barna data shows, the percentage of people saying "Attending church affected my life greatly" turns out to be fairly small, and always less than 50%. The highest reported positive response rate to this was 43% from non-Mainline Protestants. The positive response rates based on age and size, however, show results in the 20%- mid 30% range. Indeed, as Barna reports, 46% of persons attending regularly reported participating in a congregation did not affect their lives at all!

Let me try to summarize this bluntly. The vast majority of church attenders, 2/3 or more, report that congregations either do not or only marginally affect their lives. 


Even more to the point, perhaps: Congregations make little or no difference in the lives of most people who attend them.

Shock and Horror? Or Wake-Up Call?

Barna's reporting of this finding doesn't make much of this, apart from reporting it. There is no mention of ways to address this reality in their concluding summary, apart from noting that "Millions of active participants find their church experiences to be lacking." They go on to recommend that congregations work at finding ways to enhance people's participation in congregations, apparently on the theory that enhanced participation would equate with higher levels of transformation.

But they provide no evidence at all for that theory. Indeed, as we know from Willow Creek's Reveal study (http://www.revealnow.org) from a few years ago, the reality is that higher levels of participation in congregations do not correlate at all with higher levels of personal transformation or discipleship to Jesus. Not at all. 

That doesn't mean congregations are useless in transformation or discipleship. It does mean they're simply not very good at it-- or at least not good at helping people actually go very far with it.

What Reveal shows is that the congregations can be pretty good at helping people have an initial encounter with Christ, and even at fostering a "falling in love experience." But they generally don't do a good job at all-- no matter how amazing their worship is and no matter how many small groups they have inside them-- at moving many people very far in terms of maturing, much less maturity.

As the Wesleys might have put it, congregations can help people encounter Christ and maybe even begin to believe they want to follow him (prevenient and justifying grace). Congregations may provide that kind of foundation for people-- and people do value that.  We can see this in Barna's data, too-- as fairly sizable percentages in every size, generation, and tradition reported  that congregations help them have a feeling of connection with God, even if they also report those feelings are infrequent.

But congregations across the board do little to help people learn actually how to follow Christ or come to "have the mind of Christ" (sanctification, moving on to perfection/maturity). That's because congregations are not, at their core, discipling communities. That's what discipling communities are for!

And that's why Methodism came to exist in the 18th century-- to provide a venue and formats of Christian community, in addition to (and not in competition with!) congregations, where people could far more regularly experience and grow in sanctifying grace, by attending to all the ordinances of God, making use of all the ordinary means of grace, living out the vows of the baptismal covenant by following the General Rules, and watching over one another in supportive and challenging love as they did so.

This is also at the heartbeat of the emerging missional movements and many organic church movements today. It's also at the heart of what a lot of campus ministries and some Emmaus 4th Day groups (to name just two among many others!) have done brilliantly for decades.

Congregations alone aren't doing this work effectively, haven't done this work effectively, -- and generally speaking, for most people, it appears, just plain can't.

Perhaps the wake up call here is to tell us it's time to quit expecting congregations (and their pastors!) to do things they so clearly don't do and maybe can't do well!

Perhaps it's time instead to remember our own roots as missional Methodists.

As United Methodists, we are calling each other to invest in increasing the number of vital congregations. This is a fine thing to do. GBOD is here to help with that-- and we do it every day.  But also, perhaps it's time to start investing just as heavily in leaders who will generate forms of Christian community like Methodist Societies across the US, at least-- even as they already are and have been for decades in places like Zimbabwe! And yes, GBOD is here to help you with that, too-- whenever you are ready.

Shock and Horror? No. Panic moves to "kick-start" congregations into discipling? Not likely to do much but damage a lot of congregations. 

Sobriety is what these data point us to. Congregations are invited to look in the mirror, and realize what they are and are not, what they can do well, and what others can do better. Congregations are invited not to think of themselves more highly than they ought, but rather to regard other forms of Christian community that can do some tasks better than they can as their equal partners in fulfilling Christ's commission.

And maybe, just maybe, some congregational leaders, lay or clergy, are being invited to form or partner with missional discipling groups that do what early Methodist Societies (with their class meetings, bands, trial class meetings, select societies, field preaching and society meetings) did so well-- to reform the nation, particularly the church, and to spread scriptural holiness across the land. 

Peace in Christ,

Taylor Burton-Edwards
 

What Brings People to Church? The Survey Says...

"Personal invitation from someone you know" is by far the most cited reason people first heard about and then started attending a United Methodist Church, according to findings about the United Methodist Sample in the latest US Congregational Life Survey. **

Here are two charts, courtesy of GCFA,  that tell the story about what does, and does not so much, influence the decisions people make to start attending one of our congregations.


How did you learn about this congregation?

Look especially at the top two reasons, comprising over half of all responses (55.9%). The two biggest factors, by far, included someone the person already knew telling them about the church and noticing the building as they passed by. "Cold calling" is not that effective, or maybe just not that frequently done-- only 1.6%. Now look at the role of advertising. If you don't count the phone book (most churches only list rather than advertise there) it's a grand total of 1.4% who first heard about the church through an ad-- of any sort. Oh-- and the Internet? Hardly a factor at all in terms of "first impressions."  

What brought you here the first time?

It's one thing to hear about an congregation, and another actually to start attending it. But the results are still strikingly similar to what we see above. Nearly 30% of those who start attending do so because someone they know asked them. That number could be higher, closer to 40%, assuming the 10.7% who say they were invited by a member did not also check the first response. Another 23% start attending because they could get to the building easily.

Now, look at the role of advertising. All forms, including internet websites, accounted for only 1.7% of those who began attending worship in one of our congregations. 

 Oh, and just for fun, look at the rates of response to clergy invitations-- just under 5%. 

So what do we learn from this?

Let me suggest at least four things.

1. As my colleague at GCFA puts it, the UMC does not have a marketing problem; we have a sales problem! By far, the most important and effective way both for informing others about your congregation and for others actually to show up is for you to talk about your congregation with people you know and then personally invite them to come. Talking about and inviting people you know to your congregation are at least 23 TIMES more effective than "cold calling" or advertising to generate a "first awareness" of your congregation. Personal invitations from laity are at least 6 TIMES more effective than clergy invitations, and at least 17 TIMES more effective than all forms of advertising (including Internet!). So-- Laity: Go tell your friends about your congregation and invite them!  Clergy: don't hesitate to invite, but be sure to help the laity remember each of their invitations is at least 6 TIMES more effective than yours!

2. Really a corollary of #1, but an important one. Constantly work at increasing the number of people you know! Build your social networks. I don't mean add more Facebook friends. I mean be diligent about getting to know more people in each place you find yourself during the week than you do now. Maybe even plan to start going to places you haven't gone before from time to time to begin to build relationships there.

Why do I say this? Some years ago, C. Kirk Hadaway and Penny Marler did some research on the "unchurched" that revealed that, for the most part, churched people know churched people and unchurched people know unchurched people. And the longer people are churched, the fewer unchurched people they know. Since we know from the US Congregational Life Survey just how important personal relationships are in moving people to attend the first time, it is essential that we be intentional about constantly increasing our social networks, especially to include unchurched people, else chances are good our social networks will contract and so will our church attendance!

3. Location and visibility of your building matter. A lot! Just over 18% get their first impression of your congregation from seeing your building, and nearly another 23% start attending because the location is convenient. You cannot count on this traffic if your building isn't where many people are or isn't easily visible by some means. Smart signage (and probably not "cute billboard sayings!") plus good outside appearance will make a difference. 

4. Realistically, the more effective audience for your advertising and internet presence may be your own congregation. This doesn't mean you don't communicate your events through advertising and stories in the media (including social media!). It also doesn't mean you don't invest in having a working website that doesn't look like it was created in 1996 (you know what I mean!). Of course you do advertising and get yourself an attractive website.  But it does mean that you should focus your energies and expectations about advertising and internet presence primarily on being effective and useful for your existing constituency, while also accessible (and attractively so!) for first time receivers of your ads or visitors to your sites.

The top two takeaways here are not rocket science. They're not even sophisticated sociology. And they don't require your congregation to hire a consultant to develop a "growth strategy." Go talk to people and make new friends. And make sure your building is visible and somewhere folks can easily find it. If you're doing these things, you're doing the most important things by far to increase the likelihood that you may see more first time visitors over time.






**The GCFA Office of Analysis & Research asked churches to distribute a survey questionnaire to each worshipper in the pews on April 26 or May 3, 2009. Participating churches were randomly selected from a list of congregational leaders who indicated an interested in the project on their 2008 Congregational Leadership Survey.  Additional racial/ethnic churches were recruited with the help of several UM caucus leaders.  Nearly 200 churches registered to participate in the survey, with over 70% returning their completed materials. The final data represents 141 churches with individual 8,622 worshippers.

#OCCUPYCONSUMERISM

Companions,

It's time to #OCCUPYCONSUMERISM.

I know that this is not original to me.

But in continuing to ponder some of Elaine Heath's comments at the Wesleyan Leadership Conference (which sort of doubled as an emerginumc gathering, 2.5 perhaps, this year) about the ways our bodies and souls get colonized and we need to be delivered from that colonization, plus whole OCCUPY movement thing going on, plus years of being really annoyed by having my humanity and citizenship reduced to being a cog in the culture's feeding machine by the word "consumer" have left me, now, to issue a call for #OCCUPYCONSUMERISM.

Now, there is a blog by that name out there. It's sort of against buying things. In using this hashtag or issuing this call, I'm not endorsing that blog or its views. It probably has some good things to offer, too.

But this call is different. It's against allowing ourselves to be called consumers instead of people by anyone else-- government, business, economists, you name it.

We are not consumers.

Refuse that label, and all the ways it can colonize us.

We are all humans, created in the image of God.

And we Christians, disciples of Jesus, most of all, are not consumers. We are the baptized. We are new creatures in Christ. We are the generous stewards of all God's gifts. We feed the hungry-- not gorge ourselves. We clothe the naked-- not make ourselves into fashionistas. We visit the sick and imprisoned and others whose condition makes them unable to consume like we could, and others tell us we all should.

For freedom, we have been made free! So let us no longer submit ourselves to this yoke of slavery, and its name for us: consumer.

And let us seek Christ's power and the Spirit's cunning to help others be freed from this yoke, too!


Peace in Christ,

Taylor

Can We Still Talk about... Salvation? (Part 4 of the Series)

Salvation.

Estonian Salvation Committee, 1918. Public Domain.

If you were to ask Wikimedia Commons or the people of Estonia for an image of "salvation," the one to the right, or something very like it, is what each would return first.


In the case of Estonia in February 1918, "salvation" meant these three men declaring the independence of their nation at a time when the Russians had just left and the Germans were on the way to try to make it their own (which they subsequently did for a time). Salvation for the people of Estonia, as short-lived as it would turn out to be then, meant no longer being under the thumb of any other European or Eurasian super-power.

This use of the terms salvation may seem odd to North American Christians. To be fair, the next dozen or so images returned in Wikimedia Commons all relate to the Salvation Army in some way. That may seem to be a bit more "on target" for many of us who may tend to understand "salvation" primarily in spiritual terms. After all, as Marcus Borg points out in his book, Speaking Christian, "common US Christianity" tends to use the term "salvation" to refer almost exclusively to achieving some spiritual status through some set of beliefs about Jesus (and/or in some combination with works) that guarantees us a place in "heaven" in the afterlife.

If we were more familiar with the biblical languages, and the ways the Bible primarily speaks of salvation, the Estonian example might not seem so odd at all.

At their roots and in their most frequent usage, in both Hebrew and Greek, the words we translate as "salvation" and its cognates mean deliverance or rescue from an oppressive power of some kind. Most often in the Hebrew Bible, that deliverance is explicitly political. God "saved" the descendents of Abraham from Egypt, and again from the pursuing Egyptian army. God "saved" the people time and again in battle after battle that would come, first in occupying the promised land, and then in expanding and maintaining its borders. God "saved" the exiles in Babylon from exile, allowing them to return to their land. And the prophets, especially Micah and Isaiah, looked to the day when God would save not only these people but all peoples from war, and all would live in peace. 

Salvation in the Bible is certainly not only political, but it is always about real deliverance from a real threat faced by real people here and now. The Bible also uses the same words to describe God's acts to deliver us from disease, demons, death (typically related to political oppression), evil (in the Lord's prayer) and sin.

One of these usages may be surprising-- deliverance from disease. New Testament Greek uses three different verbs often translated into English as "heal." Two are "therapeuein" (origin of our word, "therapy") and "iatrein" (if you're a science or medical geek, you might recognize the word "iatrogenic," a term applied to illnesses caused by treatments for other illnesses). The third is "sozein"-- the verb most commonly translated "to save." When this verb is used of an instance of healing, it tends to imply that the illness "healed" was overwhelming or threatening the life of its victim, so that healing was nothing less than getting one's life back, or perhaps even getting to have a life for the first time freed from the named disease, disorder, or defect.

Of all of these uses, "salvation" from sin is about the least prevalent in the Bible. That doesn't mean it is any less important or real. But it might give us pause, both about how we think about salvation, and how we think about sin. 

During the "great soteriological truncation" that happened in Western liturgies and theologies beginning in the sixth century, Christian praying about the scope of God's salvation in Jesus Christ narrowed dramatically from a wide field (that included extended thanksgiving for salvation in all the senses listed above, including for creation as an act of salvation from primordial chaos!) almost solely to "the forgiveness of sins and all other benefits of Christ's passion" (Book of Common Prayer, 1662). What Jesus saved us from became deeply narrowed as well, to the point that Jesus was Savior primary as the one whose death meant we could experience forgiveness of sins and entrance into heaven-- and that was about all.

In more recent times, as of the late 19th century at least, there has been a kind of counter movement to the "great soteriological truncation" that has sought to help Western Christians let go of a sin-and-heaven-fixated vision and return to something like the wider vision earlier held, prayed and taught. Unfortunately, this "counter-truncation" has often pursued its path with an agenda whose effect, and sometimes even intent, has been to eliminate the idea that salvation has anything much to do with sin, or that sin is even a real problem from which most of us need any significant measure of deliverance. (Marcus Borg is a participant in this, as well!). The effect of the "counter-truncation" on our praying has been, among other things, the elimination of prayers of confession, or if not elimination, the attenuation of those prayers to the point that they are more about confessing our "humanness" and asking God to be "okay" with us or help us feel "okay" about it rather than deliver us from it in any real way.

What the counter-truncation ignores then is that sin is real, truly powerful, and always destructive. While its biblical terms mean "missing the mark" (amartia in Greek), "stumbling" (paraptoma in Greek), or "walking astray" (chata in Hebrew), none of these was met either in Judaism, early Christianity or early Methodism as if they were relatively minor defects we might simply get over in time. In every case, sin was understood as something from whose power we all need to be, and by God's grace, our diligent practice and with the help of a community "watching over one another in love" can be set free. (For more on this, see "Can We Still Talk about... Sin?" on this blog).

In short, both the "great soteriological truncation" and the "counter-truncation" have done significant damage to our capacity to appreciate the breadth, height and depth of God's saving love in our lives, corporately and individually.

So perhaps it's time for a true "soteriological reclamation"-- a movement that seeks, embraces, struggles with and rejoices in salvation "in all its parts," neither excluding nor becoming fixated on  any one of them, and recognizing that we are all in need of every one of them.

We need nothing less than salvation from systemic oppression, in every form it presents itself-- political, military, economic, and all forms of slavery we have invented or ever may invent.

We need nothing less than salvation from disease that continues to ravage human populations, to keep many of us in poverty in the developing world and to drive some of us into poverty because of health care debt-- the number one driver of bankrupties in the US in recent years.

We need nothing less that salvation from demons-- those forces that trespass into and colonize the bodies and minds of people. The escalation in human trafficking, especially sex trafficking of children, is sign that even the most developed cultures have not entirely "outgrown" the demonic.

We need nothing less than salvation from death, not to escape the fact of our mortality, but rather to free us from the power of fear and anxiety for lives of perfect love and service to God and neighbor in this age and in the new creation to come.

We need salvation from evil itself, with the confidence and capacity to renounce its reign and power in our lives, individually and systemically.

And we need nothing less than salvation from sin so we may walk aright, learning mercy, wisdom and justice as we do.

We need full salvation.

In Christ, we are offered nothing less.

And in Christ, we are being into living witnesses of nothing less.

So may we live, and so may we speak, as those being truly and fully saved.

And so may we pledge to speak of salvation, speak of it often, and speak of it in all its parts.

And more than speak, so may we seek the Spirit's wisdom to be trained and train others to live out the salvation offered in Christ in its fullness.

The soteriological reclamation we need will not come from a few theologicans, bloggers or authors writing about it.

It will come from our speaking of it with the people we know and communicate with regularly.

It will come as we pray, confessing our need for deliverance, including from sin, and interceding boldly for such deliverance to come in our personal and corporate prayers.

It will come as we lean into all that salvation involves, and learn and train others how to live it faithfully.

And it will come as we-- you and I-- speak not simply of salvation as a "thing" or a "process" we need, but rather as the great gift offered by God through Jesus, Savior of the World.

How will you speak of salvation and live the way of the Savior? 

 Peace in Christ,


Taylor Burton-Edwards

Event Announcement-- Third Annual Wesleyan Theological Forum: “Preaching Christ”

The Third Annual Wesleyan Theological Forum will be offered Tuesday, November 15^th, at 9:00 a.m. at Grace United Methodist Church in Franklin, Indiana.  Professor Mike Pasquarello of Asbury Seminary and Dr. Derek Weber of Aldersgate UMC will lead the Forum focusing on the theme “Preaching Christ in the Wesleyan Tradition.”  This continuing education event is open to clergy and laity in and beyond the Indiana Conference.  Cost is $40.00, which includes lunch. 

Dr. Pasquarello is the Granger E. and Anna A. Fisher Professor of Preaching and Biblical Interpretation at Asbury Theological Seminary.   He received his B.A. from The Master’s College and his M.Div. from the Duke Divinity School.  His Ph. D. is from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  Dr. Pasquarello has published many books on preaching and pastoral ministry, including a forthcoming book entitled John Wesley: Homiletic Theologian (Abingdon).  He and he wife, Patti, have two children.

Derek Weber received his undergraduate degree in Speech and Theatre from the University of Indianapolis.  His Ph. D. is in Practical Theology with a concentration on Homiletics and Media/Communication from the University of Edinburgh (Scotland).  Derek has taught preaching in the Course of Study in Indiana, and for fourteen years served the Dean of the Academy of Preaching in the former North Conference.

Following lunch Mike and Derek will be sharing in a preaching practicum to help participants hone their skills in preaching Christ in the Wesleyan tradition. 

For more information about the Wesleyan Connexion Project, click here or contact Andy Kinsey via email andy.kinsey@inumc.org.

To register for the event, click here.

UPDATED October 26, 2011: Learning from the HP TouchPad Fire Sale

Used by permission. CC 2.0.

Companions,

I'm thinking there may be lessons to be learned from the HP TouchPad fire sale fiasco a few months back and its HPs announcement at that time that it was likely to be exiting the consumer market almost entirely. 

The fire sale itself went badly enough. Yes, HP liquidated their inventory of their soon-to-be-orphaned tablet device in record time. But in the process, the crashes of its own servers and websites and the failures of its call centers to be able to process the traffic of their own fire sale raised real doubts about whether HP could even hold its own in enterprise IT systems.

Well, that was August. And that was under HP's previous CEO, Leo Apotheker. Now we have word that HP's new CEO, Meg Whitman of eBay fame, has announced that HP will definitely continue its PC business.

 
Why the turnaround on this point?

 Well, it turns out the PC business, despite its relatively low margins in the current markets, remains one of the most profitable divisions of HP. It also turns out that costs to spin it off would be rather steep ($1.5 billion was the estimate) with little guarantee that the newly formed company would be successful against the likes of the already resurgent Lenovo and Dell. That, and having a PC division internal to HP meant HP was in a better position to maintain favorable contracts for their supply chain in their enterprise server business (which they intended all along to continue).

Oh, and one more thing-- that "profitable" PC business was losing market share (to Lenovo and Dell!)  every passing day that its future seemed grim or undetermined.

Low margins, yes... but solid benefits to the company overall, and threats to the company if it were not decisively maintained. 

Whoever has ears...

Peace in Christ,

Taylor Burton-Edwards

When Everything Suddenly Goes "Captcha"

Regular readers of this blog will know that my posts are generally more topical than personal in nature. I tend to reflect primarily on issues related to missional Christianity, early Methodism and our life as United Methodists seeking to embody both, and hardly at all on personal matters.


This post will be a bit different.


Three weeks ago, on two consecutive days, my field of vision suddenly, with no warning, began to "go Captcha." Things were distorted. Text appeared to have parts blocked out. And I was much more sensitive to light than usual. It was sort of like trying to look at the world after looking at the sun or a bright light, and having a blind spot interfere with interpreting what I was seeing. Only this blind spot wasn't a spot-- it was more like a jagged line in my right eye. But since the brain interprets inputs from both eyes, all the time, closing my right eye didn't fix the disturbance of my visual field. 


When this didn't go away after 10 minutes, I called my eye doctor and got an appointment. I had no other symptoms (numbness, tingling sensations, headache, loss of motor coordination, etc.), just this new "Captcha vision." Within 30 minutes, it was better. After an hour or so, things were mostly back to normal, though it seemed I now had more "floaters" than usual in my right eye.


Testing at the eye doctor's office showed no damage to the retina and no sign of stroke. The diagnosis: ocular migraine. Treatment: none. Prognosis: this can happen again. If other symptoms start to accompany it, especially any motor disturbance or significant numbness or pain, go to the ER. Otherwise, learn to deal with it. 

It did happen again the next night. Once again, no warning. Well, actually, this time I did notice an increase in photo-sensitivity (perhaps because it was dark and so the contrasts were clearer) about a minute or two before "Captcha world" re-appeared.  But otherwise, again, it just happened. I was at home, safe, not needing to drive anywhere or read anything, so I just turned out all the lights and waited the 30 minutes or so for the most pronounced symptom ("Captcha vision") to pass.

So far, this hasn't happened again. I hope it doesn't. Based on what my eye doctor told me, however, I would not be surprised if it does. I'm glad I know what to do should it return.

But it's gotten me to thinking about how we see the world in the weeks since. 

How do we make sense of things that come with such distortions built into them? 

Our brains are apparently built to be extraordinarily powerful and rapid image processors. Neuroscientists would remind us that we do not process text as text per se (as a computer typically would, via the zeros and ones that make it up), but as images. Every letter is its own image. When we "read," our brains compare the image of each letter to other images like it so we can decode what we see into some kind of meaning (one hopes that intended by the original author!) When the images are all fairly similar in size and form to each other (all the same font, for example), we can learn to decode meaning fairly rapidly. But when the images vary widely in size, color and shape (aS In tHis PhraSe), the whole process slows down considerably. Words dissolve into mere letters, each of which has to be compared with every other image we have of that letter to recognize what the letter is in relationship to the others around it. Only then can they be reassembled into words and given meaning. Add distortion of the letters to the mix, as Captcha does, and things slow down even more. 

That's exactly what the makers and users of Captcha technologies want to happen, of course. Captcha is all about slowing us down, taxing our brains. The makers and users of Captcha technologies want to create a means to ensure that computers aren't responding (most would take far longer to respond that we would, since they're not nearly as good at image processing as our brains are). They also want us to be sure we really want to say and include the content we have, and are serious enough about sending it on that we'll take the time to decode and correctly reproduce the distorted words, some of which aren't even words. 


But Captcha gives us two things the world at large does not necessarily give us-- immediate feedback and a second chance. If you enter the letters and number wrong, you know it right away. It tells you. You can then try again. Or you can even request another Captcha image or even an audio Captcha (though it is often garbled as well) if you don't think you can make out the one before you. 


While trying and retrying to decode the Captcha may be frustrating, it truly will not let you proceed until you do decode it correctly. Though you may be completely sure that your reading of a particular letter or number is correct, you do not get the luxury of imposing your system of interpretation, however helpful it may have been for you in the past. Captcha knows what it has distorted. You may or may not. 

What if We always Live in Captcha World?

What if the world is not what it seems to our usual means of perception, the usual stories we tell about ourselves, our default assumptions about reality? What if what we see and respond to truly is distorted reality that should cause us to pause and reconsider rather than plow ahead based on our received assumptions and meta-narratives?

It seems to me that we have ample warning and invitation from Jesus to consider that the world as we see it, even in the church, is just such a set of distorted images.
 

Consider his usual teaching method-- parables. 

Last week we were reminded in the gospel reading from Mark that Jesus taught in parables precisely to make it hard for people to see, hard for people to understand, hard for people to decode what he was saying if they tried to apply their usual ways of thinking and seeing and loving God and neighbor to his words. He taught in Captcha, we might say, presenting a "slant" view of reality that causes any with ears to hear and eyes to see to have to stop, think, and try again and again if they expect to align the world to what Jesus presented them. 


Many of Jesus's parables were almost insanely distorted. A sower gaining a miraculous harvest, though apparently wasting seed on all sorts of soils where it "obviously" could not possibly grow? Someone intentionally planting mustard weed (something as crazy as intentionally planting kudzu in most places in the American South these days!). A gardener telling a land owner to wait another year for a harvest while he invests even more time on caring for a fig tree that has yet to bear fruit? 

If the kingdom of God is ultimate reality, and if the kingdom of God seems as weird as this-- "Captcha weird"-- what are the implications for us as denizens and citizens of that kingdom?

And what are the implications for how we interpret the world around us? Can some of our usual meta-narratives (such as, "the measure of success for the church is how many people attend worship or participate in its programs or give money through it" or "The UMC is in decline in the US so must act right now to fix it or we'll die") help us?

If there were something like a "kingdom of God Captcha" in place that wouldn't let us proceed with our plans to propagate either a teaching, a program, or a church-wide initiative, would that Captcha let us interpret the distorted signs of our times according to such dominant meta-narratives?

Or might it say, "Try again"?

Or might it even refer us to a kind of  "audio Captcha"-- the Word of God-- the old-school Captcha of Jesus, and particularly his parables-- for cues about how to look at things? Might we then be captured by the Captcha-weird kingdom of God that seems to value tiny mustard seeds, small bits of starter, and a single pearl above the mythos of "bigger is always better and more is always needed?"

And what might we learn, specifically about the prospects of "denominational death," from what was just about the only parable recorded in John's gospel-- "Unless the seed of grain, having fallen to the earth, actually dies, it abides alone. But if it dies, it brings forth much fruit"? 


Perhaps we do live in a Captcha world-- and a world captured by all sorts of distortions of the image of God and the transforming love and power of God's kingdom. 


Perhaps it is time we let Captcha do its work among us ecclesially-- slowing us down, making us think and rethink, even stopping us where we're not on track.

Perhaps the one thing most needful for us to move forward is not to rush headlong getting busy about  the fixes for the problems we think we have based on our usual meta-narratives... but to stop, captured by the "Captcha wisdom" of Jesus whose crazy-making parables and bizarre pattern of life, driven by the Spirit whose comings and goings we cannot begin to know, may just be the key we need to hear, see, decode and then live reality aright.






Peace in Christ,


Taylor Burton-Edwards