Cultivating Missional Systems

A few weeks back Luther Seminary played host to the 2005 consultation of the Gospel and Our Culture Network. Titled Cultivating Missional Systems, the event reported back findings from a three year research project on, you guessed it, embedding missional church ideas in larger systems of congregations. The rationale here is twofold: 1) congregations risking change will seek out structures of support if they don't already exist or are not adequate to the challenge, 2) congregations lacking adequate structures may realize missional ideals, but only in the short term. Isolated congregations lack the external resources to make long-term succession possible.

Here then are four highlights from the consultation and its chief sponsor, Church Innovations:

Change
Drawing on the work of Everett Rogers (Diffusion of Innovations) and Ronald Heifets (Leadership on the Line) distinctions were drawn between technical and adaptive challenges. Technical challenges presume clear problems, a clear solution, and a strategic plan to bridge the gap between them. Adaptive challenges concern underlying matters of "habits, values, and attitudes". The misidentification of an adaptive challenge as technical results in great heartache and woe. For example, the example offered by Pat Keifert of Church Innovations, take weight loss. When considered as a technical challenge, the strategic response is quite clear: eat less and exercise more. The continued existence of overweight people and a diet book industry suggests that weight loss is not in fact a technical challenge. So then, how can we rightly distinguish technical and adaptive challenges. Moreover, what interventions are required to respond, and before that to desire and imagine responses to, adaptive challenges?

Church FutureFinder
Church Innovations commends the Church FutureFinder as one response to these questions.

"Church FutureFinder is a database of current and historical congregations. It can be accessed online at http://www.churchinnovations.org/churchfuturefinder. Once you register at the website for FutureFinder, you enter at the appropriate level to enter data and obtain reports. CFF is in use in several seminary courses, getting ready to be launched into a seminary internship system, and available for congregational leaders to play with."

Small Groups
What would it look like to engage small groups, not as a program, but as a strategy for ministry?

Dwelling in the Word
Finally, consider this framework for moral deliberation: dwelling in the word.

Vocation & Identity

This morning, I discovered a back issue of Lutheran Partners (March/April 2004) devoted to "Vocation and Identity". Here are some highlights:

"Vocation: Using a Useful Doctrine" by Stanley Olson
"The concept of vocation is useful when we consider the church as steward and proclaimer of truth. . . .Every Christian is called to know the truth, not for the sake of knowledge but because true understanding and true speech serve God’s purposes. Each Christian is called to reflect on life through faith’s normative historical expressions so that his or her words and work will be toward the heart of (“in accordance with”) God’s work."

"In Search of Quotes" by William A. Decker
Decker seeks, but fails to find, the source of Luther's oft quoted counsel to maids and cobblers. Here it is:
"The maid who sweeps her kitchen is doing the will of God just as much as the monk who prays — not because she may sing a Christian hymn as she sweeps but because God loves clean floors. The Christian shoemaker does his Christian duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship."

And here's Decker's rousing conclusion:
"Housekeepers who sweep floors clean, shoemakers who make quality shoes, governors who wisely administer, scientists who explore God’s visible creation, and pastors and rostered lay ministers who use their God-given skills to teach and preach the life and work of the crucified, resurrected Lord of Life all have a place and role and purpose in the world which God has made and loves through the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ our Lord."

The Closet, the House and the Santuary

Jack just dropped off a copy of a 1981 essay from The Christian Century. Here are some highlights:

"The locus for prayer/worship is threefold: the closet, the house and the sanctuary. Each has its unique place within the disciplines of the faith. Each has its own limitations if allowed to stand alone. And each offers reinforcement when exercised in concert with the other two.

Picture them as forming a three-legged prayer/ worship stool. If one or two of the legs are taken away, the result is a precarious balancing act. To overemphasize or place more importance on one of them will elongate that leg. To minimize, discredit, misuse or ignore another will shorten that leg. A tilted stool does not provide a solid foundation on which to trust one’s weight."

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"Some churches have created worship teams to plan the service, as an attempt to counteract one pastor "doing unto" the congregation. But who is to say that a team of ten persons will not also "do unto" the congregation -- and even more so as they add up their creative ideas? Inviting such participation is really an attempt to rope the house and drag it into the sanctuary.

In any renewal, let the sanctuary stick to its role of the public and corporate recital of the drama of grace. Then let us find ways to train sensitive lay leaders who can enable house worship. And let us also encourage and support those persons and groups that are providing spiritual direction for solitude, seeing that their efforts are vitally linked to renewal of the total worship life of the church."

You'll find the full text here.

Living Out Our Callings in the Workplace

Richard Bliese, Academic Dean at Luther Seminary, kicked off this year's Mid-Winter Convocation, Living Out Our Callings in the Workplace . Here are a few excerpts from his first presentation, "Living Ambidextrously in the Real World":

"the decisive mistake of monasticism was not that it followed the path of strict discipleship and mission. Rather, the mistake was that monasticism essentially distanced regular Christians from the notions of discipleship and mission, thus permitting these twin concepts to become the extraordinary achievement of only a few 'religious' people."

"This two-worlds thinking. . . divides Christian groups into two categories: the 'premium' disciples and the 'regular' Christians from whom little by way of discipleship and mission is expected."

"Real mission work becomes the reserved domain of the new monastics, that is, the clergy and their few faithful friends with whom some of the ministry is shared."

"[But] God is at work in the world with two hands."

"The role of mission has been taken away from the monastery, away from all special "mission agencies," and given back to the baptized believer to be carried out daily in the real world."