Something Big is about to happen, and we are part of it

Maria is tearing it up over on her blog. Go, Maria, Go! Check it out. Here’s an excerpt:

Something Big is about to happen, and we are part of it. Cincinnati is about to turn around, and I feel the Church here will be a big part of that. Our hope is to exhort the Church, to spur it into action and into wrestling with our local context, specifically by moving back into neighborhoods and being a presence there.

Revolution is all we speak of. At night there is fire in our eyes, we speak with the hushed tones of an amazed lover. Our Lord is doing something grand. We have dreams, and we’re learning to live them and we’re learning to listen. We are preparing for something intense and life-giving in this neglected, starving city.

I wish I could show you what my life is like. I wish I could take you to my home, to nights spent cooking, cleaning without even minding, listening to music drift in from our library, talking on the porch, reading, and hanging with a sweet cat. Moving was one of the wisest things I ever did. Come over!

I wish I could take you to church with me, in whatever incarnation, whether it’s Sunday at St. Elizabeth’s cathedral or Tuesdays at the Klinefelters’ house singing Taize songs and wrestling with what Jesus followers are supposed to be about ( As Liz said, “What is normative for a group of followers of Jesus? Are there norms? If there are norms then where do they come from, how do we discern them, and how do we enact them?”). And sometimes we have church accidentally, like our Monday dinner meeting to start our literary journal—there’s nothing better than seeing everything come together over lasagna and realizing that you have nothing to do with how perfectly suited for the task our editorial group is. And everywhere you go, you meet someone else who’s been drawn into this Story.

I wish I could take you to Midpoint, where I saw the poor, the partiers, the scenesters, and the artists mingle. I wish I could show you these buildings, this neighborhood called Over-the-Rhine, the courtyard where we ate dinner Saturday night. For three days last weekend, downtown was alive and vibrant, music tucked into bars and people braving the rain to see it. This city has the worst of inferiority complexes, and has real problems with a slow government that is hesitant to take risks. But it doesn’t have to be that way. So we gather not only for music, but to take a stand. This city will not be about or known for our homicide rate, or our impoverished neighborhoods, or our reputation of being politically conservative. Living here is about finding the good in a place you don’t expect, and those who choose to live here are among the best people you could ever want to meet. As for those who don’t choose to live here, perhaps they are the hungriest of all–perhaps they are the most vulnerable to beauty. We will write and sing for them also.

It’s all happening. Just you wait.

Blah…

Over the last several months a small group of pastors, leaders, and dreamers have been getting together and talking. Blah, blah, blah… we’ve been talking about culture, spirituality, faith, leadership, theology, the Kingdom, and the church… and we’d like to invite you to join the conversation.

On Monday, Oct. 2nd, from 4:00-5:30 PM, we’re getting together with folk from around Greater Cincinnati to talk. We’ll meet at Cincinnati Christian University (details on what room are forthcoming, they have been gracious to open up their campus for us to meet). There is no agenda for our conversation. When we gather those present can toss out topics for discussion, we’ll pick whatever sounds most interesting to the group and discuss. Generally, our desire is to see what God is up to in the city at large. Where is the Kingdom breaking in? How is the church, leadership, faith, spirituality changing in our rapidly shifting culture?

Feel free to spread the word to others who you think would be interested. Personally, I hope very much that we can create room at the table for folks from all sorts of ecclesiastical and theological bents and persuasions… the more the merrier…. Baptists, Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, Pentecostals, and non-denominational mutts – all welcomed.

Getting Neighborly…. Russell on House Church

My neighbor and Presby Pastor, Russell Smith, has some great thoughts on House Churches and what the “Classic Church” (his term for traditional/institiutional) can learn from them. Definitely worth checking out:

The Eagle and Child: The Classic Way of Church — what we can learn from House church

Bullet-point Quotes:

1) House churches are intentional. …
The institutional church often times encourages spiritual laziness.
2) House churches are relational. …
The institutional church needs to do a better job of celebrating and communicating relationship — I see that there are lots of deep relationships in institutional churches — the challenge is how to bring new people into those relationships.
3) House churches truly give of themselves. …
There is value in an institution that can create bigger scale programs than just a few people can pull together. But the house church critique still stands — institutional churches have to ask “who is all this stuff for?” and if we say “for us” then we ought to tremble.
4) House churches are not empires — Institutional churches often become little more than extensions of the head pastor’s ego.
5) House churches are not slick — there’s a local megachurch here with the slogan emblazoned boldly on their sign “A real church for real people” — Now I defend this church to my colleagues, but let’s be honest about the irony in that slogan.
5) House churches are non-programmatic. House church folks don’t really want to “run the bases” of the Purpose driven life. …
And honestly they’re right — most of the programs I’ve been through are nowhere near as life changing as they’re hyped.

Go, Russell, Go. One of the things I appreciate about Russell is his deeply generous spirit.

I love my neighborhood. It is so cool to have neighbors like this. Next weekend we’re going on a neighborhood camping trip with about 6 families from our street. I’m looking forward to getting to know folk better.

Ambassadors of the Kingdom

We had a great discussion last night at House Church. We spoke of how we are Ambassadors of the Kingdom. In the last few weeks we’ve been talking about what is next for us as an emerging community of folk. What is God calling our little church into? What are we to be about?

The conversation seemed to be taking 2 simultaneous tracks. The Inward Journey and the Outward Journey (thank you, Elizabeth Oconnor). I have the sense that there a Great Spiral at work in our lives as believers. That as we grow in the Inward Journey so we grow in our Outward Journey. As we know Christ more and more we live-out Christ more and more. There is strong movement in the Great Sprial… a vortex of transformation that ebbs and flows by the Spirit of God. In the Inward Journey our common-union with God deepens which propels us into the pain of the world where our common-union with Humanity deepens.

This Great Spiral, I would submit, is very like the Missional Helix (from here and here).

We begin with Theological Reflection (TR) with our understanding of the Missio Dei (the Mission of God), the Kingdom of God, the incarnation and resurrection (etc…) into Cutural Analysis (CA), our exegesis of our culture, our engagement with the world, the milleu in which we live. From there into Historical Perspective (HP), our collective stories of the individuals and groups in our particular situation (in our case Cincinnati); this all propels us into Strategy Formation (SF) – how we do what we do, the enacting of our faith. As you can tell from the graphic (and I encourage you to read the articles linked above) you see that this is an ongoing process that builds. Like a spring or a spiral it builds on itself and cycles through these processes on ever deepening levels. Our strategy (how we do it) forces us back to theological reflection and on it goes….

To me this is a beautiful image of what is happening in our House Church. There feels like there is this deep deep churning going on in our conversations – both individually and collectively. Like hand churning butter or ice cream (which is a lot of work, by the way) we are spiraling together in this formative process of creation. It may seem slow or messy, but it definitely is in process. I very much have the sense that God is in the creative business with us right now. And well, I suppose he always is, God is always about creativity in the re-creative, new creation, redemptive sense.

We turned next to Philippians 3 and the amazing idea that we are citizens of the Kingdom of God. Everything else is rubbish, garbage save Christ. Jesus is the point of our top and we spin balanced on him alone. Only got to touch on this and I hope we can go deeper in the weeks ahead….

[There is] a present reality of the Kingdom among His sons and daughters. Paul concurs: “Our citizenship is in heaven” (Philippians 3:20); “We are ambassadors for Christ” (II Corinthians 5:20; our allegiance is to Christ, the King of the Kingdom of God); we are “strangers and pilgrims” in a foreign land (I Peter 2:11). Our land is the Kingdom of God. The country we live in is an alien nation. In true members of God’s church, the Kingdom of God is already ruling in them. This is what Jesus means when He speaks of the Kingdom of Heaven. (from here.)

We are Ambassadors of the Kingdom and in doing so we spin like tops balanced on Jesus. We churn with Jesus. It feels like this deep churning is flowing through our community. It feels like God is up to something. It feels like the Spirit is in our midst. Where will this all turn out? What is it that he is forming us into? What is the Strategic Formation that will result as part of this Inward/Outward Journey of the Great Spiral?

I know not.

But it feels good to be in this place. God is birthing something in us as a House Church…. something for the City of Cincinnati. I feel as if we are following in Chad’s footsteps with all this. We are part of what God began in Chad and his vision for the City. For perspective on that see this collage of writings in Next-Wave. There you will read a blog post from But it feels good to be in this place. God is birthing something in us as a House Church…. something for the City of Cincinnati. I feel as if we are following in Chad’s footsteps with all this. We are part of what God began in Chad and his vision for the City. For perspective on that see this collage of writings on Next-Wave . There you will read a blog post from Kevin Rains shortly after Chad’s death:

“I literally want God to AVENGE Chad’s death by raising up 100 workers to replace him in greater Cincinnati; 100 new kingdom minded people who will plant “grass roots communities of faith in the city” (Chad’s words) over the next 2 years.”

I have sense that we are part of that. I hesitate to speak that because I don’t dare want to presume something we are not – this is way too important. But in humility I have to admit that I do see it that way. I hear echo’s of Chad’s sole podcast (which sadly seems to be offline now) where he shared his vision of a church for the city.

So, where does this take us? What’s next? Liz articulated it well last night:

“What is normative for a group of followers of Jesus? Are there norms? If there are norms then where do they come from, how do we discern them, and how do we enact them?”

Where does all this Kingdom-thinking, this Missio Dei, this cultural exegesis, this story-listening, this historical situation lead us? What are the norms by which we act? Our little group wants to “Do the stuff” (in true Wimber-style) but what is the stuff that we do? That’s where we’re going. And I’m pumped.

Kingdom Come.

EepyBird.com – Extreme Diet Coke and Mentos Experiment

Can you imagine how sticky they would be!

EepyBird.com – Extreme Diet Coke and Mentos Experiment

And so I'm wondering…

a king and a kingdom

Let the Kingdom come as the church is undone, on earth as it is in heaven

Oh boy, now I’m in trouble. This is where I am.

I’ve observed a most interesting occurrence. Whenever I start moving away from church-centric thinking and toward a more Kingdom of God (KoG) mindset I find that I keep “having church” more and more.

Case in point. So I write this post critiquing my understanding of my process around the term “church” (note the “my” qualifiers), that was Monday. On Tuesday we have House Church and I write this post. To which Liz (who is part of said HC) comments:

One word to describe our gathering last night:

“Church”

Perhaps in its truest sense. Or at least I hope so.
Liz Bowater | Homepage

And I reply:

Indeed. My thoughts exactly! In fact, I almost entitled this blog post “Tonight, we had church”.

This has happened before. It seems that as my theology (and hopefully praxis) shifts to a more KoG-centric perspective the Church (and perhaps a particular “church”) keeps forming in the midst.

I often describe my time at Fuller (in Pasadena, CA) as a season in which God reshaped my ecclesiology. I felt (and still feel) that it was a time in which lots of deconstruction of my assumptions about what the church is and does occurred. I found that I was moving away from a traditionalist AND seeker-sensitive mindset at the same time… moving toward and in something more organic, relational, and simple. About 2 years ago (right about when I was leaving Fuller) this whole Kingdom of God thing shows up. By which, of course, I mean it shows up to me… to my reckoning… it was there all along, but I hadn’t really noticed. Ever so slowly has this KoG thingy been trickling into me. Exacerbated by people like this.

It is interesting that in undergrad (at Asbury College) I sensed my faith becoming more personal, more individuated. In seminary I sensed my faith becoming more communal (church as the People of God) and more localized in the context in which I live (neighborhood and oikos). Now I sense that my faith (which is a generic way of saying my fundamental guiding reality) is becoming …. broader, global, more fluid, and more regional (concern for the city). And this seems to be a building thing, my faith does not seem less personal, nor less communal, but it feels like it is taking on a new flavor, a new texture.

It is a good journey, bumpy at times, but the view is great.

O Lord, Hear My Prayer

I don’t have words for last night’s House Church… worship that was deep and beautiful… even more so because Cloey was singing along. It is something amazing when your toddler sings:

“O Lord, hear my prayer, O Lord, hear my prayer
When I call, answer me.
O Lord, hear my prayer, O Lord, hear my prayer,
Come and listen to me.”

Woah.

Linked up >>> emergingumc: Emerging, Post-Emerging, Integral… Theses for Discussion

Are you allowed to use the words “emerging” and “UMC” in the same sentence? Apparently:
emergingumc: Emerging, Post-Emerging, Integral… Theses for Discussion

Good post with great links around the ideas behind and the idea of the “emerging church”. Here are some snippets:

“There is a complexity to this religious phenomena that is captured in yesterday’s understanding of the Emerging Church as a conversaton. Movement tends to move it backwards into linear / concrete / static thinking. If it is a movement, there must be some sense of concrete definition to it. Truth is, there are many. The Emerging Church, in its rawest of forms, is non-linear / dynamic / multi-layered / spiral. With the Emerging Church labeled a movement by media and adopted by the mainstream, we still need to understand this expression of Christianity not only as a religious or theological occurrence, but one that is anthropoligical and sociological.”

“That “emerging” may be entirely incompatible with and not supportable by existing or any “institutional” structures without the latter essentially regressing and undermining the former…”

“I admit, I’m not satisfied at all with what the emerging church is in mainstream Christianity. It’s a rather open ended label that anyone can adopt and derive some meaning or definition; most often the meanings and definitions identically resemble the old more than they do the new. Since the emerging church theoretically is the space between the old and the new, I don’t think our thoughts should be stuck in the canyon of the in between. Hence, why I would consider myself to be post-emerging – I’m naturally moving beyond.”

Yes.

From my friend Elaine:

“Your YES is not yes, if you can not say no.”