Fellow San Diegan Jason Evans wrote a thought-provoking piece the other day on missional discernement. It’s good stuff, as usual, from a talented leader. You should read it.

I do have some thoughts on what he wrote regarding being missional, but I’ll share those in more depth later. His post comes at an interesting time for me: today marks one year since announcing the close of our missional church plant, Ikon Community, and that has prompted me to conduct a little ‘missional discernment’ of my own:

What is the status of our ‘mission’ one year after closing our official ministry?

I’ve finally settled into a post-ministry career

Unlike a lot of planters, I didn’t seek to be bi-vocational. For better and for worse I decided to become an entirely non-professional minister. I was (and still remain) convinced that the future of professional ministry in the United States is grim at best, and problematic for trying to connect with post-Christian groups.

But for 2.5 years, and all during our church planting effort, I worked feverishly in vain to find a new career after 12 years in professional ministry. It was more than frustrating, it was humiliating.

Then, not long after closing Ikon, a new opportunity presented itself at my workplace. I’ve been in that new role for 7 months now and I’m hopeful about our family’s fiscal prospects for the first time in years.

Another funny irony is that I am now, essentially, a professional fundraiser – exactly the task I dreaded most while trying to plant a missional church. I went from struggling to raise $40,000 a year for the church plant, to being responsible for raising $9 million a year for a local nonprofit.

(As an aside, what I have learned about fundraising in the last 17 months has immensely impacted my perspective on how we could be funding missional work. There is a great deal missional leaders could learn from the nonprofit sector. Moreover: there is a gigantic window of opportunity to capture massive amounts of wealth as it is transferred from one generation to the next. And that window is rapidly closing; that transfer is happening right now. Churches in particular are doing a poor job of securing that wealth, and by all accounts the next two generations won’t have nearly as much disposable wealth to give.)

We’ve finally settled into our local community

For 2.5 years we really struggled to connect with people. But almost immediately after shutting down Ikon, local relationships began to open up to us in a remarkable way. In fact, in this past year, our family has somehow gained a larger and deeper network of friends than we’ve ever had in our entire lives – mostly with people in our neighborhood.

I recently had lunch with a local church planter and I mentioned this curious development. He asked, “Why do you think this happened immediately after closing your church plant?” I answered, “Because we don’t have an agenda for people anymore.”

And it’s true, we really don’t. At least, not a one-sided agenda for enlisting them into our own little fiefdom. I definitely have a personal interest: I want their friendship, and I want to give them mine. I deeply desire the fraternity and equality reciprocity brings to neighbors.

Almost none of them attend church – certainly none of them are committed to any kind of faith community – and, to be honest, I have no interest in converting them. The idea alone feels like a form of betrayal.

Also, I’ve been humbled by the quality of their community. By and large, Jenell and I agree that these people do friendship and community better than any church we’ve ever been in. I’ve come to realize it is a conceit of the church that we are the authority on ‘true community’, and it may very well be a particular conceit of the missional/emerging church. Just as with nonprofit fundraising, I think Christians have a great deal to learn from secular communities on this matter.

I am starting to gain an interest in Jesus again

In my conclusion to the missional postmortem, I said I needed to learn how to be a Christian without getting paid for it. Well, I still haven’t. My personal faith has been radically stripped. I could write whole books on what I don’t believe anymore, but would struggle to fill a fortune cookie with what I do.

Yet, recently I’m experiencing an interest in Jesus again. In fact, I work with people of all kinds of faiths, and I’m more convinced than ever that we could all learn a great deal about life and love from Christ, regardless of our creed.

Along those lines, our family has started sporadically attending a local Presbyterian church. The place is so uncool it makes me want to weep for joy. Like Lewis once said, a good liturgy should be like lacing up an old shoe; you hardly notice it’s there – which is exactly what I need right now.

So, what is the state of our ‘mission’?

Well, in some ways, I suspect, it’s better than ever. In other ways, not so much. I successfully transitioned out of the professional side of ministry, but dropped ministry along the way. We’ve connected with an unchurched community, but have no desire to get them ‘churched.’ I’m more committed to Jesus, but less committed to Christianity.

Actually, I really am more keenly aware than ever that different Christian groups mean subtly but significantly different things by the word ‘mission’. For now, suffice it to say that our ‘mission’ is simply to be decent people; that is, good partners, good parents, good friends and good neighbors.

As far as that goes, I think we’re doing alright.

Technorati Tags: Ikon Community, missional

Food nourishes us. Without it we die. Within it reside the elements of the earth, of which we are composed and with which we are daily renewed. Food revolutionizes us through an internal, hourly insurrection of the new overthrowing the old.

Food demonstrates the intimacy of grace and work: it grows as a gift freely and abundantly the world over, yet requires effort to cultivate, process, prepare and store. Through it we have access to become not merely grateful recipients, but faithful stewards of life.

Through food we are conscripted as co-conspirators with the impossible political agenda of the universe: the cause of life over death, daily struggling to resist the entropy of the flesh until, one day, for each of us, death seemingly triumphs – only to become, in the end, food for new life.

Food represents the time-fullness of grace. Often it comes just when needed. And when it does come, food must be consumed soon or risk rotting on the shelf – no longer good for today. Content to teach us patience for tomorrow’s timely gift.

Through food we affirm that life burns more than merely fuel, but runs upon the joy of beauty and flavor as well. We skewer and sauté, dice and drizzle and gift our confections one to another for family, friends, holidays, or simple lunchtime rituals.

At it’s best, food transforms to become the consumable love of others. When we serve a meal, we serve our hearts. With it we accept, affirm, celebrate, please, delight, enjoin, and seal ourselves to one another. (At its worst, food becomes the empty and dangerous substitute of love unrequited or forsaken.)

In all these ways, and more, food feeds not only our bellies, but our hearts and minds too. More than any other single thing, it is with food that God enables the suckling of humanity’s soul.

And yet, even with an abundance of resources, one in five American families with children don’t get enough to eat. This erodes the health, creativity, dignity, and joy of millions of people in the U.S. alone and demonstrates a systemic denial of their basic human right to participate in the gift of food. Worldwide, food insecurity is nothing short of a major crisis, especially, right now, in places like Somalia

This is why ancient Jewish and Christian teachings concerning the just practice of economics draws centrally upon a story about a miracle involving food (Exodus 16 and 2 Corinthians 8). This is why the most politically subversive acts of Jesus involved sharing a meal with others (Matthew 9, Mark 2, Luke 5, etc). This is why Jesus’ very presence is symbolized by a dinner party where everyone gets plenty to eat (1 Corinthians 11) – and not, I might add, by a musical concert. And this is why Jesus’ litmus test for righteousness was not a measure of religious adherence, nor doctrinal purity, nor personal piety, but rather by the simple yet self-giving act of providing relief to the hungry and thirsty, the naked and alone (Matthew 25).

So do something about it.

If you know people who have less, invite them for lunch or dinner – often. If you don’t know people who have less, find them. Get to know them. Have a dinner party, with bread and wine. Treat them as equals, because that’s what they are.

Find a food pantry or food bank nearby and help out. Organize a food drive at work, at school, or in your neighborhood. (If you need it, I can give you step-by-step instructions). Consider giving to UNICEF’s relief fund for the famine in Somalia.

If you happen to be in North County San Diego, Interfaith runs two food pantries – one in Oceanside and one in Escondido – where last year alone we provided 480,000 meals. And we are in desperate need of donations because the need continues to increase.

Where there are hungry people, there is no gospel without food.

Technorati Tags: Food, Food insecurity, food pantries, Grace, nutrition, social gospel

Of course, the burning of books has fallen out of favor in recent years, so these volumes are yours for the taking. One, ten, twenty, or the whole lot. Just name your titles.

If you’re in Southern California, shoot me a message and you can come pick them up. I’ll even throw in a cuppa coffee and a friendly chat, if you’re so inclined. If you hail from out of town, send me your address and the shipping fee and I’ll hurry them off (sans latté).

Most of these are assorted nonfiction Christian titles (we’re donating the fiction to our local library). Several are course books from my MAGL program at Fuller Theological Seminary, if that sort of thing interests you.

UPDATE: Titles already claimed are listed in strikeout.

General Theology & References

Who Needs Theology? by Stanley Grenz & Roger Olson (John Chandler)

An Introduction To Ecclesiology by Veli-Matti Karkkainen (Josh Hopping)

Portraits of God by Allan Coppedge

Desiring God by John Piper

From Eternity To Here by Frank Viola

Unprotected Texts by Jennifer Wright Knust

Reading Scripture With The Church Fathers by Christopher Hall (Josh Hopping)

Manners and Customs Of The Bible by James Freeman (Josh Hopping)

The New Ungers Bible Handbook

The Gospel of Matthew, Sacra Pagina Volume 1 by Daniel Harrington (Thomas Lyons)

New International Commentary on James by Peter Davids (Thomas Lyons)

Thru The Bible With J Vernon McGee (4 hardcover volumes) (Julie Mnaion)

Missional/Emerging Church

Church Next by Eddie Gibbs

The Good News Of The Kingdom by Van Engen, et al (Aaron Henderson)

The Church Between Gospel And Culture by Hunsberger and Gelder (Geoff Hsu)

The Missionary Congregation, Leadership & Liminality by Alan Roxburgh (Brandon Becker)

The Missional Leader by Alan Roxburgh and Fred Romanuka (Brandon Becker)

God’s Missionary People by Charles Van Engen (Aaron Henderson)

A Credible Witness by Brenda Salter McNeil (Josh Hopping)

Transforming Power by Robert Linthicum (Jason Evans)

The New Global Mission by Samuel Escobar (Brandon Becker)

The Local Church, Agent of Transformation by Tetsunao Yamammori (Josh Hopping)

Announcing the Kingdom by Arthur Glasser (Josh Hopping)

The Power of Place by Dolores Hayden (Geoff Hsu)

The Continuing Conversion of the Church by Darrell Guder (John Chandler)

The Shaping Of Things To Come by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch

The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch

Exiles by Michael Frost

A Christianity Worth Believing by Doug Pagitt

The New Christians by Tony Jones

Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna

A Theology As Big As The City by Ray Bakke (Brandon Becker)

God So Loves The City by Van Engan, et al (Aaron Henderson)

Treasure in Clay Jars by Lois Barrett, et al (Jason Evans)

Permission Granted by Graham Cooke and Gary Goodell (Julie Mnaion)

Theology & Family

The Family Handbook by Anderson, Browning, et al

Theology and Families by Adrian Thatcher

Authentic Human Sexuality by Judith & Jack Balswick

Men at the Crossroads by Jack Balswick (Josh Kerkoff)

Beyond Sex Roles by Gilbert Bilezikian (Jason Evans)

Marriage and Modernization by Don Browning

Family Ministry by Diana Garland

On Justice

Justice, A Global Adventure by Walter Burghardt (Josh Hopping)

In Pursuit of Justice by James Skillen (Stephanie Struck)

With Justice For All by John Perkins (Josh Hopping)

Churches That Make A Difference by Ron Sider, et al (Thomas Lyons)

Leadership

Character Forged From Conflict by Gary Preston

Barnabas, Encouraging Exhorter by Bobby Clinton (Brandon Becker)

Connecting by Paul Stanley & Robert Clinton (Brandon Becker)

The Foolishness of Preaching by Robert Farrar Capon (Jeff Bassett)

Called to Holy Worldliness by Richard Mouw (Josh Kerkoff)

Lectures To My Students by Charles Spurgeon (Aaron Henderson)

Spiritual Formation

The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard (Thomas Lyons)

The Little Flowers of St Francis by Raphael Brown (Josh Hopping)

The Year of Living Like Jesus by Ed Dobson (John Chandler)

The Mystery and the Fullness by Jennifer Abel

Jesus Brand Spirituality by Ken Wilson (Aaron Henderson)

General

Reinventing American Protestantism by Donald Miller

Under The Overpass by Mike Yankowski

Heaven by Lisa Miller

Generation Me by Jean Twenge

People of the Lie by M. Scottt Peck

A View From The Back Pew by Tim O’Donnell

Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters by Meg Meeker

Technorati Tags: Books, Christianity, gifts, Giveaways, Theology

Not long ago I predicted the coming of “term marriage.” Well, it looks like that possibility might actually be sprouting in the rich soil of popular American celebrity life.

Divorce among celebrities, of course, is nothing new. It has long been a popular American spectator sport. What’s new is the happy, even jovial celebrity divorce. This, I propose, is not only novel, it is the harbinger of a genuinely new cultural institution just beyond the horizon: term marriage.

Exhibit A: Psychologist Judith Sills’ commentary on the “failure” of Al and Tipper Gore’s 40 year marriage. Who says this is a failure? asked Sills, when they clearly had many beautiful years? That is, after all, far more successful than most marriages in the United States. Why not celebrate what they had for so long rather than condemn its ending?

Exhibit B: Yesterday it was reported that Jack White and his wife Karen Elson have invited their friends and family to a “divorce party.” Yes, it’s time for Jack and Karen to end their marriage, but this is no somber affair. After all, they enjoyed 6 successful years together. Their divorce simply marks a transition to a renegotiated friendship.

Commenter Dr. Jane Greer loves Jack and Karen’s approach, remarking,

“All I can say is good for them. Throwing this party is an important way to remember and hold on to the good times in their marriage, celebrating the way they were, but no longer are.”

I believe these are merely the leading edge indicators of a steadily rising tide that harkens the emergence of a new kind of marital contract being negotiated right before our eyes by the icons of national secular mores. Celebrities are the priests of our culture and they set a prophetic tone for what is good and right in our society. I don’t mean that as a judgment; it’s simply a fact.

You may disagree but I think this is a big deal. In fact, I would argue it’s a far bigger cultural shift than gay marriage, because the latter is simply an extension of essentially traditional conservative family ideals into the realm of homosexuality. This may be very uncomfortable for people unaccustomed to same sex relationships, but it isn’t really an innovation of the marriage covenant itself.

The real innovation will be the legal removal, in part or by degrees, of the contractual restraints of fidelity and perpetuity that are intended to incubate intimacy between two formerly distinct people. Practically speaking, this is what we already see with the culturally-curious-yet-familiar practice of “open marriage” (which is hardly new) as well as the still culturally shunned (and yet even more ancient) practices of polygamous and polyamory marriages.

(For the record, I think term marriage will be the bridge that connects us to the utterly free practice of virtually any form of institutionalized relationship between consenting adults of any number, any gender, and for nearly any period of time).

These new forms marriage contracts would be, on the positive side, contracts of greater freedom and peace (albeit in a very limited sense of those words)…and that is precisely why cultural commentators like Judish Sills and Jane Greer gush over these enlightened celebrity splits – because they appear to be far better alternatives to the cliché of anger and abuse that divorce has come to represent over the past 40 years. And frankly, I think they’re right. Some people should terminate their marriages and peaceful departures are far better than violent ones.

But in my view, and perhaps ironically, these new marriages will require contracts of significant individual vulnerability and isolation in order to achieve the kind of peace and freedom our society values most. Personally, I don’t think the trade-off is worth it. Better still to find a mate with whom you can spend a lifetime learning to love – a task which requires a large enough space with high enough walls to overcome the unhappiness, conflict and boredom that, at times, will inevitably arise between any two people on any journey of significance.

But then, I still believe in a genuine two-shall-become-one-flesh kind of human intimacy (call me old-fashioned). Still, whatever you may think of innovative marriages, I remain convinced they are coming in institutional form sooner rather than later.

For better or for worse.

Technorati Tags: Divorce, Jack White, Marriage, News, Term Marriage

For those who aren’t up to speed, here are the series installments:

• So when does the fruitfulness begin?
• Ikon timeline
• Intentionally unorthodox decisions that may have led to morbidity
• Complicating factors and personal reflections
• Some personal struggles, part 1
• Some personal struggles, part 2

These posts apparently struck a nerve. I’m grateful for the long list of people who wrote. Most of those correspondences were private, but a few were public and added significantly to the insights I was trying to capture:

• Jamie Arpin-Ricci: Surviving Missional
• David Fitch: Death of a Church Plant – Some Reflections and Hope for the Future of Missional Church Planting
• Everyday Mission (Mike Bishop): An Open Letter to Jason Coker

My sincere and humble thanks to all who have written.

Conclusions
Why did Ikon fail? Why after about a year of strong momentum did we experience a fairly rapid loss of energy and decline? There are, I think, a few essential reasons:

1. We didn’t have partners.
Over the 18 months we gathered we had at least three individuals or couples who expressed some level of interest in joining me and Jenell as leaders – but the timing just wasn’t right for any of them. Moreover, ultimately everyone lived too far apart to spend much time together and everyone (including us) was too busy working and raising kids to commit the time necessary to build the strong sense of community that might bring this about.

If I could do it again: I would hold off calling our gathering a “church plant” (or anything) until there was a small core of truly committed people – even if that took years. In fact, I think Ikon would still be meeting if I hadn’t impatiently raised the stakes by declaring we were going to become a “church.” Doing so prematurely increased the pressure on everyone, especially on myself and my wife.

2. We didn’t have an aesthetic element of worship
I’m a good teacher, and I can facilitate contemplative practices – but that’s not enough to enrich most people’s spiritual lives. The absence of this element in our gatherings took a toll on all of us.

If I could do it again: See #1. By prematurely calling our gig a church plant, I elicited an expectation for “worship” in people. It would have been better to wait until we had the gifts we needed to fill out a church mission. We should have just gathered, dialogued, laughed, played, broken bread, drank wine, and made some waves by serving in the community now and again…in short, we should have just had fun being a fringy group that didn’t have to be defined until enough people came along who had the gift mix and commitment to be more.

3. I ceased to be a disciple
Three years ago when I left my job as an Executive Pastor in a large church I set out to become a non-professional pastor – what I found out was I didn’t know how to be a non-professional Christian.

As a pastor, I loved spending all my time, energy, and thoughts on my faith. I loved going to my office every day of the week. I loved the pace, the studying, the constant contemplation of theology, the time for prayer, the counseling of distraught people, and, most of all, the preaching in front of attentive crowds. I loved doing this for a living. It was a great life.

But I’ve discovered that was a privileged life that shared little in common with the people I led.

I’ve found it is incredibly difficult to be that kind of Christian when you’re not getting paid for it. When I work 50 hours or so a week (at one or several jobs), and have a family to attend to, and constantly stress about not being able to pay the bills, it’s incredibly hard to spend time reading scripture, or being attentive to the work of God around me, or think in a disciplined way about theology, or be involved in a ministry… or even pray meaningfully.

So, I didn’t do much of any of that. After about a year of leading the group that way I simply ran out of steam. I’d lost my spiritual depth and that, coupled with the professional and financial difficulties I encountered, led to a pretty severe crisis of faith.

If I could do it again: I wouldn’t. Frankly, I don’t have any business leading any kind of discipleship group until I’ve learned to be a disciple myself (without getting paid for it).

What’s next?
I really don’t know. What’s interesting is that while I’ve had very little favor with the church effort, I have had tremendous favor in my professional life in the last 10 months since getting hired on by my current employer. Last week I was offered a promotion to a high level position in the organization, which I’ve accepted and that new job will be completely engrossing, so it’s hard to imagine being involved in any kind of ministry effort on the side. Maybe that is the direction God has for me.

So I’ll work and wait – and try to learn to be a Christian again.

Technorati Tags: Ikon, missional, Missional Postmortem, postmortem

She may actually be the person for the job. Miller herself embodies a kind of religious plurality – raised a secular Jew, then later married by a Rabbi and an Episcopal priest in an interfaith ceremony, then finally joining a “progressive, inclusive” Jewish synagogue where she attends regularly with her daughter in order to reconnect with her Jewish heritage.

Given this thoroughly secular Modern pedigree – journalist, theological liberal, and enculturated believer –  Miller would be easy to dismiss by orthodox devotees and she is often the recipient of harsh criticism, particularly from religious fundamentalists. But read this brief article and get to know her just a bit. She is a woman who, every week, weeps during the recital of the Shema. She is a mother who broods over the spiritual development of her daughter, and she is a person whose own religious fears and discomforts are assuaged by a firm belief in “a God who’s love extends beyond the tribe.”

And this, I propose, explains a great deal about Lisa Miller’s book Heaven. In it, she plays the role of spiritual midwife for a culture caught in the terrifying pangs of a pluralistic birthing. Miller has been there, as a daughter, as a wife, a student, a journalist and now as a mother, she has grappled with the tensions of competing religious beliefs that from the inside appear as strangers but from the outside resemble countrymen. She brings this tension to her explorations of the afterlife: “Like so many Americans, then, I approach religion from an uneasy, untraditional place, and like so many, I have struggled with what I believe about heaven” (xxvi).

Miller goes about her task of cultural peacemaking by comparing diverse visions of heaven through a tapestry of traditional teachings, scholarly alternatives, folk reflections, and pop cultural depictions. She writes with the eye of an anthropologist, the mind of a journalist, and the heart of a mother. It is genuinely educational; there is surprising depth of inquiry for a popularly written book and details that most people will find surprising. She wrestles openly and honestly with the influences of outside cultural and cultic beliefs on the development of Judaism, Christianity and even Islam. She places liberal and conservatives in dialogue and uncovers the deep yearnings and affections that feed the comfort that heaven provides.

Yet Miller has a dog in this fight – albeit a reluctant one. Early, while reflecting on research into incipient Judaism, she asks hypothetically, “[If I were an ancient Hebrew] What if my Rabbi’s told me that [the semitic pagan cult of the dead] was forbidden? That these family customs violated God’s law? What would I do? How would I think about my dead?” (36-37). Her proposal is that, in order to find comfort, ancient Hebrews coming to grips with an emerging religion that forbade a daily, imaginary interaction with the souls of dead loved one, the best conceptual alternative might have been the invention of a distant home for dead loved one. For Miller this is more than an honest sympathetic inquiry because it cuts to the heart of her metaphysical assumptions.

The trouble is that Miller, along with most of her theologically liberal cohorts, has more in common with her fundamentalist critics that she realizes – both are Modern foundationalists. Because she believes that a sure knowledge must rest on indubitable foundations, she cannot help but treat mere belief with a kind of paternalism. It’s not just that she handles such beliefs and traditions with skepticism (as we all should), it’s that she never treats these traditions and accounts as potential evidence because, for her, religious beliefs and traditions could never possibly qualify as evidential.

The end result is that the whole book comes off as a bit patronizing with strong undertones of melancholy – because in it we see Miller herself finally lay down any remnant of a belief in an afterlife. Like any foundationalist of the liberal variety she can only protect her own religious belief by bifurcating epistemology and relegating faith to the path of subjective personal experience. Consequently, it doesn’t matter what millions of people from one generation to the next have discovered about God. What matters is her own experience, and, when it comes to heaven, that experience is empty:

Whenever I have asked myself – over and over – “Do you believe in heaven?” I always think of my grandfather. I try to visualize him. I love him, I was there when he died; I miss him and my grandmother every day of my life. Surely if I believe in heaven, I would see them there in my minds eye. Sadly, I don’t (241).

So, despite having written a book that compiles mountains of evidence that that there may indeed be something beyond the grave, Miller is unable to integrate that knowledge into a holistic worldview that takes faith seriously as a tradition of knowledge. As a result, Heaven, while educational, touching, poignant, and lucid, ultimately comes of as a sad commentary on the impotence of the Modern era to satisfy the deepest longings of humanity. For Miller, this means she believes in some kind of God for goodness’ sake, but can’t seriously accept the notion of God’s present power in human life beyond the immanence of culture.

No wonder she weeps when she hears the Shema.

(I was provided with a copy of this book in return for the review I’ve written. I was in no way required to write either a positive or negative review of the book.)

Technorati Tags: Books, Heaven, Lisa Miller

This has been a tough post to write.

As I previously mentioned, the past two years have brought two of the toughest personal challenges Jenell and I have ever faced. Last time I wrote about my two-year struggle with joblessness. That was tough.

This was tougher.

On September 30, 2009 Jenell’s mother, Nolie, died after a multi-year battle with cancer. I wrote about her at the time and I don’t want to be redundant, but there are some things that haven’t been said.

Jenell grew up in southern California as an only child. She and her mother Nolie were quite close. Even after we married in 1991 (she was 19, I was 20) Jenell visited her mother nearly every day and if she didn’t actually see her, they at least spoke on the phone.

Then, in 1993 I abruptly moved our fledgling family to Utah in pursuit of a new direction for my life – and we didn’t look back for 15 years.

Jenell missed her mother badly. I remember how much my wife struggled those first few years in Utah and, to make matters worse, over the coming years we didn’t see her parents more than once or twice a year because we were always several states away (first Utah, then Ohio). Over time this contributed to a growing distance between Jenell and Nolie and I saw how it took a toll on my wife.

I didn’t do much about it.

In late 2005 Nolie was diagnosed with cancer – about a year after we moved to Ohio. Jenell struggled with the fact that her mother was coping with the illness after we’d moved even farther away. But Nolie fought the disease and, thankfully, went into remission. However, by November of 2007 Nolie’s cancer returned and we knew it was more serious this time. We’d already decided to move back to California, but now we knew it was more important than ever.

Of course, I wanted to plant a church. A crazy, grassroots, missional, quit-my-career, screw-the-system, it-will-never-pay-our-bills-in-a-million-years kind of church. So I bundled the two together (moving back near family/planting a church) and sold it to myself and everyone else as a package deal. We moved in the summer of 2008.

The first year was a Godsend. We settled into the Oceanside community, enjoyed the beach, and built new friendships. Jenell re-connected with her mother as much as possible. It was tough for Jenell to see Nolie’s health deteriorate, and, I think in an effort to protect Jenell emotionally, Nolie was rather guarded about her condition – but Jenell pushed through the awkwardness. It was a very good thing.

It was right smack in the middle of all this that we attempted to start Ikon Community.

Actually, Ikon went very well initially. Our group started heating up in the Summer of 2009 – right when Nolie took a turn for the worse. Jenell started spending more and more time helping her dad with Nolie, and I began to wonder if we could maintain both efforts. Jenell said we could, and I ignored my better judgement.

When Nolie passed away in September 2009 I thought to myself, Jenell is going to need at least a year to really grieve so we should probably hold off on moving Ikon forward. But again, I ignored that impulse. Instead, I tentatively brought it up to Jenell, but she quickly dismissed the idea. She seemed to be handling the loss extremely well.

But Jenell didn’t know what she needed and I heard what I wanted to hear. I should have known better. I should have pushed through her dismissals and really cared for her. But, mired in my own emotional crisis, I was desperate for some kind of win in my life. Jenell knew that and she suffered silently.

The truth is, Jenell was in emotional shock. Outwardly she remained the rock she always has been, but inwardly she was processing her grief in complete isolation. I wasn’t there for her and, to be perfectly frank, we hadn’t allowed ourselves to grow close enough to the Ikon group to lean on them like we should have in a genuine community of faith.

So, for the better part of a year – from the fall of 2009 to the fall of 2010 – Jenell and I were each struggling with our own very serious individual grief. We weren’t completely available to each other or to the people of Ikon. As our frustrations grew on several fronts (personal, professional, financial, missional), we increasingly withdrew.

Things are better now.

Nearly 33 months after moving to California, 18 months after Nolie’s death, 6 months since I finished grad school and landed a stable job, and 4 months since closing Ikon Community, our lives are just now beginning to feel somewhat healthy. My perspective is better than it has been in a long time and Jenell has allowed me to share in the processing of some of her grief. I’m grateful for that.

I don’t know what lies ahead. But I don’t ever want to go back.

Technorati Tags: Church Planting, Family, Ikon Community, Missional Postmortem, Nolie

What does that mean?

It means that in my tradition faith itself tends to be seen as the presence of something, the accumulation of which at certain quantities (nobody really knows how much) will cause mountains to move, businesses to succeed, sicknesses to recede, etc.

It means that in my experience the faith is like a charming general store in a peculiar southern town, where candy, and coffee, and sugar, and flour, and tobacco plugs, and foreign fashions shipped over the ocean, and tools for building and cleaning and repairing every contraption known to man are displayed in glass canisters and behind counters and in topically organized merchandise rows, the buying of which equips patrons for the rigors of Modern life and comforts clientele against the bitter promise of a long anticipated winter that comes before spring.

It means that in practice my faith has begun to feel like the backyard labrynth of a country junker; rusted husks of cars and trucks; stolen street signs and auctioned traffic lights; seas of binder clips and moleskine notebooks; mounds of keyboards and mice and computer monitors; broken spokes and towers of rubber tires; heaps of comic books and textbooks and repair manuals turning to pulp on the lawn.

And yet I keep collecting more.

How can I give up meat or chocolate or ice cream when faith is my grossest consumer indulgence?

So, I hope to spend the next forty days de-accumulating four decades of spiritual hoarding. It means I hope to take kenosis seriously and finally empty my begging bowl. It means I plan to explore faith as absence rather than presence.

And yes, it does mean, for me at least, that in order to do so honestly – in order to take kenosis seriously – I must be willing to risk the loss of faith.

So, how will I do this?

Schedule:

• Confession – Days 1-10: I will attempt to be honest about my actual faith. I’ll spend time examining my choices, actions, habits, relationships, etc. This will be a time of deconstruction.
• Wilderness – Days 11-20: I’ll walk through a journey of trying to discover how I should (and if I should) replace whatever I’ve discarded.
• Testing – Days 21 – 30: I’ll practice approaching my life from whatever changed perspectives I may have encountered up to this point. That shift may be subtle or radical; it may just be a more sincere and consistent practice of what I already profess.
• Covenant – Days 31 – 40: I will reflect on the period of testing, make whatever adjustments I think are necessary, and attempt to establish a renewed rhythm of life that faithfully reflects what I truly value.

• Days 1-3 of each period I’ll take inventory and write conclusions.
• Days 4-8 of each period I’ll explore resources that challenge my faith.
• Days 9-10 of each period I’ll rest and reflect.

Resources:

• Study: I’ll read from a variety of sources – including religious and secular works.
• Reflection: I’ll journal privately. I may or may not pray. I suspect I will be driven to pray more or I will abandon prayer entirely.
• Relationships: I’ll do this with the help of key relationships, beginning with those I’m closest to but extending to others on the periphery of my life when I approach topics that seem most relevant to their areas of wisdom.

I’ll need to take conspicuous steps to lean into the relational portion of this journey. I’m not interested in devising my own personal system of spirituality. That’s probably what I’ve already done. I’m hoping to discover a holistic life of faith grounded in an epistemology I can have confidence in. (I don’t necessarily mean a religious faith – I think everyone lives by faith in something). However, my current epistemological leanings dictate that truth is reflected in the web of my entire context, including history, tradition, culture, and relationships as well as my own personal abilities (indeed, over and above my own personal abilities).

Ironically, that will mean visiting a few churches. I need to see church, and the Christian faith, differently.

It also means, among other practices, I’ll blog about some of my experiences. This week, my blogging will follow the Confession theme, and, appropriately, I’ll conclude my processing of the closing of Ikon Community. I’m counting on the interaction here to take its place in what I hope will become a web of meaning that will be woven over the next 40 days.

Consider yourself invited.

Any suggestions?

Technorati Tags: Disciplines, Faith, Lent

Not that A View From the Back Pew isn’t good.

Actually, Tim is a solid writer. He tells engaging and often funny stories about his journey of faith. His prose can get a bit labored at times as he guides the reader through the basics of various religions as he sees it, but that’s just because he wants us to accompany him on his journey.

Tim writes with a missionary zeal, partly because he wants to spare others the demons he wrestled for the better part of forty years. Tim understands that the nuns who so rigorously constrained him as a child in Catholic school were well-meaning, “But mostly fear prevailed. I was afraid of Hell, I was afraid of yardsticks, and I was afraid of nuns.” Tim doesn’t want that fear to be the prevailing spiritual condition for anyone else seeking God.

And let’s face it: he’s right. Fear is often the motivating dynamic in religions of all stripes.

What made this book so interesting for me was that Tim’s message is basically identical to the gospel of American Evangelicalism – “Knowing religion is not the same as knowing God” (xiv) – except Tim jettisons any and all blind allegiance to the authority of the Church (as he was taught as a Catholic) or Christian scripture (as he would have been taught if he were Protestant).

The end result is that Tim crafts a spirituality for himself, governed entirely by himself. Typical of Modernist thinkers, Tim requires a reductionist kernel; an epistemological foundation that can be unimpeachably and universally applied from the bottom-up to serve as the prime mover in a causal-chain that reliably governs his life. For Tim, that foundation ends up being, quite literally, a feeling in his gut – “that trusty vibration in my solar plexus” (233).

Many Christians will scoff that this as nothing more than subjective emotionalism (others will just call it heresy, since Tim is heavily influenced by the gnostic gospels), but, frankly, it’s not all that different from the fundamental rationale I’ve heard from countless other Christians (and leaders) over the years. Tim just has the courage to admit that he really is the final arbiter of truth according to his worldview. In reality, religious fundamentalists are no different; they’re just playing a mental shell-game where Descartes’ cogito ergo sum wears the guise of tradition or scripture (or tradition about scripture, really) and is re-imagined as a delusion of objectivity.

What Tim is lacking is a nuanced view of truth as a tapestry of meaning that weaves together threads of culture, tradition, enquiry,  relationships, and circumstances, etc., as well as personal experiences in a pattern of ever-emerging knowledge and wisdom. My hunch is that Tim would embrace the idea – right up to the point where he had to submit to it in the form of someone else.

Still, although I think he misses the mark theologically and epistemologically, A View From the Back Pew is full of culturally relevant and brutally-honest (and, I think, often true) critiques of religion. If you can read it through a sympathetically critical lens, I recommend it as a window into the world of hyper-modernist spirituality and a partial peek into the landscape of a post-Christian future.

(I received a galley copy of A View From the Back Pew free of charge by the publisher in return for agreeing to review the book. I was not asked to offer either a positive or negative review.)

Technorati Tags: A View From the Back Pew, Books, Christianity, Epistemology, Gnosticism, Religion, Tim O'Donnell

Oceanside would like nothing better than to clean up its gang-and-graffiti stained reputation by attracting new businesses to re-create an idyllic beach-front ambiance on historic Coast Highway.

Businesses like Bull Taco, an edgy new taco shop about a half mile from my house, are exactly what this town wants.

But this morning, Bull Taco owner Justin Lewis was dismayed to discover his shop had been vandalized by a stencil-graffiti rat. Wearing Hollywood sunglasses. Flying a kite. With a kite-flying and fleeing immigrant family emblazoned upon said kite.

Fortunately, before Lewis could paint over the crime-depicting-crime (“As the owner of a restaurant, it feels weird that I have a rat on the wall.”), reporters had turned up to chronicle what appears to be the latest occurrence of a global phenomenon.

Yes, Banksy appears to have hit Oceanside.

Put us on the map baby. We have arrived.

Technorati Tags: Banksy, Graffiti, Oceanside