can somebody explain Hirsch to me?

OK, so I’ve struggled to understand Alan Hirsch ever since I met him. And really, I actually right-out disagreed with him, although I obviously join him in choir singing that the church should become more missional.

But friends promised me that what I’ll find reading the Forgotten Ways will be different from what I found at the seminar, so I’m busy reading it, and thus following Alan online more as well.

So, can somebody please explain to me: What the hell is Alan doing at the mega-churches? Last thing I remember he was talking about something completely the opposite? Not true? Did I miss something? Now suddenly he’s all numbers, success, talking about “infrastructure needed to make movements happen”!

If he can get them more missional, I’m all for it. But I really struggle to understand the link between what he said earlier and what he’s doing now. And if you follow the facebook status updates, this seem like a really big thing for him.

reading Transforming Mission

Arthur asked whether I’d create a space where Transforming Mission, te well-known book by David Bosch, can be discussed, and starting in a few weeks, this will happen. The group will be joined by myself, and maybe one or two other young pastors from our denomination, some friends from TGIF, some friends from Nieucomminuties, and Annemie Bosch, the wife of David Bosch.

Hopefully we’ll start in the week of 9-13 March, although we still need to find a day that would fit everyone, and then get together every second or third week. I’ll be blogging on this as the discussion go on, and invite all who cannot physically join us, to join us in blogging about Transforming Mission. I’ll blog about some updates on what we’ll be reading, and sometimes some info that might be important when reading as well. So here is the first mail I sent out last night:

OK, so now that everyone is back in SA, it might be time to get digging into Transforming Mission.

I suggest we get together during the day, morning or afternoon, rather than evenings. Let me suggest Wednesday mornings, starting on March 11. Let me know if this won’t work for you. I’m happy with doing a weekly thing if everybody is up for it, but maybe getting together every second or third week might be better for those who are already highly committed at other places (which is everyone).

Lesslie Newbigin described Transforming Mission as a Summa Missiologica.

“It has been said that “any missiology can only be done as a footnote to the work of David Bosch” (Bevans & Schroeder 2005:69), making it analogous to the words of Albert the Great which were spoken at the funeral of Thomas Aquinas, that theology after Aquinas will be only a footnote to his work After the death of Bosch, König (1993) described him as probably the greatest theologian ever to come out of South Africa, particularly where scientific theology is concerned.”

I believe that at least three academic fields/qualities come together within Transforming Mission. Bosch as historian, Biblical scholar, and missiologist. It was the combination of these three (at least) that made the writing of this work possible.

For the first discussion, read the Introduction and Chapter 1. The significance of starting in this way shouldn’t be overlooked. It’s not neccesarily obvious. Looking at Jesus and the early church before describing three different “missiologies” from within the New Testament open some windows into the approach Bosch used at other times as well. Of special significance in understanding Bosch (although you might well differ from me in my highlighting of this one aspect above the rest) might be the long quote from Schweizer on page 47. His own words after this quote was: “In all our discussions about Jesus’ mission we should keep this perspective in mind”. Read the chapter, let’s discuss the significance of this.

To attempt and get a grip on the work, I’d suggest you take a look at the three short chapters: Five, Eleven and Thirteen.

The subtitle of the book “Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission”, might have more than one meaning, but one of them would be the fact that Bosch works with paradigm theory, consider a paradigm shift to be under way, and attempts to point a way forward for mission within this emerging paradigm (used long before the emerging church got it’s name). Chapters 5 and 11 comes before and after the description of the different paradigms from the time of Jesus onwards. And would give a picture of underlies the writing of the book.

Proffesor Piet Meiring always talk about chapter 13 as “vintage Bosch”. The student of Bosch become almost frustrated at times, because you struggle to find the voice of Bosch within Transforming Mission. This summary of mission up to the end of the 80′s, foundation for the 90′s onwards, sometimes seem to hide the voice of the author. Chapter 13 provides the reader with a glimpse into Bosch’s vision of what this might mean, captured in only a few pages.

I pray that the reading of this would be much more than a mere intellectual exercise, but that it would be a spiritual journey of discovering the life with Christ which calls us to be part of the mission of God and the church within this world.

Some questions you might consider is to try and see the tensions and similarities between Transforming Mission and your own tradition and thoughts.
The implication for the church of what we are reading.
How this relate to our current context in South Africa.
And make notes where something seem unclear. This is not the easiest book you will ever read.

Looking forward to reading this with you.

Cobus

So, if you want to blog on the Introduction and Chapter 1 within the next few weeks, that will be a great way of taking part in the conversation. If you do, let me know, and I’ll link to all the posts as we go along.

John of the week: Intro

Once a week I get together with some of the finest classmates I had during my years at university. These guys and girls challenge me, and I them, on how we preach the Bible truthfully to a new generation. We struggle with the texts, the commentaries… we do exegesis old school style, we talk about our concern for a younger generation, and we translate this into talk that can hopefully help us to preach both relevant and truthfully, keeping up with the latest in Biblical research (as far as possible). We started working with the gospel of John, so I might be posting some thoughts on the gospel of John from time to time.

The gospel of to John. Written by the Fourth Evangelist (whoever that was), writing down what was tought by the beloved disciple (whoever that was, probably a Jew from Jerusalem who knew Jesus and was there in the last week of his life). Written somewhere between 80-110 AD, for a community already seperated from the Jewish faith. In Ephesus.

Just imagen. The beloved disciple, the last one who knew Jesus personally, the one who taught this congregation, has died. The one who’s words have kept them growing in faith is gone. This community start to write a gospel for their place and time. They know that this is not the exact words of Jesus, that’s not the idea, but this conveys the Christology, the understanding of Jesus as the Christ. And it calls them to have faith in the Christ. Yes, it’s been more than two generations, maybe 3, if you take the age in which parent got their first kids in those times, since Jesus dies, and this gospel starts to talk about how a community that still have faith in Jesus the Christ will look like.

This is written in the face of many heretical ideas circulating. Many things didn’t work out as expected. Jesus didn’t return after a few years (Paul already wrote about this problem 30-50 years earlier), and now all kinds of ideas start to circulate, and the congregation need to be reminded of who the Christ was.

Anyhow, that’s some of the background as I imagen it.

@Jake; creation theology and ecology

Usually it is said that if your comment become as long as a post, better get your own blog and post it there. So, in response to Jake’s question to me, this is what I’ll say:

What will the church of the future look like? What do be need to focus on? Well, I believe that one thing that needs to get some serious attention is a theology of creation. How do we think about the world in which we find ourselves in light of our reflection on God, how do we think about God’s act of creation, and what about God’s continous acts of creation?

Turn to the classic creation narratives (remember not the only ones we find in the Bible), Genesis 1 & 2. Was the earth perfect before the little incident with the evil snake in Genesis 3? A bit of background is in order. We have two totally different creation narratives in Genesis 1 and 2. The first probably from a priestly source, talking about creation in 7 days with rest on the last, the second probably from a non-Jerusalem common-folk source. The first point to the cultic rythm, showing that it is inherent in creation, the second the the task of looking after the land, working on it.

Then in Genesis 3 we have the snake and apple incident. What traditionally we call “the Fall”. The Fall, from total perfectude, to total depravity, so we were taught. My problem is that the two creation narratives, and especially the first, doesn’t prepare me for the coming fall. Genesis 1 teached that all living things is created, each to its specie. Everything, the whole system exist in Genesis 1. Genesis is similar, and Genesis 3 talk about the relationship between man and earth, man and creation, being broken. The only hardship spreading out that is not directed at man, is directed towards the snake. But this “total depravity” doesn’t talk about nature turning against itself, does it? Not in these texts at least?

Jesus’ message was clear, the kingdom of God is at hand. The gospel of John makes it even clearer, Jesus came to give life to the full. It is not something for someday. To take the Isaiah 11 text literally, would beg to ask why in living out believe in God’s continues creation and re-creation of creation, we are not taking part in making this true. As David Bosch would have said, if God’s idea of heaven mean that wolf and lamb dwell together, then surely God would want it for earth as well? (Think the Lord’s prayer?).

So, in response to your question Jake. I think we need to focus on man’s broken relationship with creation. Genesis 3 doesn’t seem to point to an inherent brokenness in creation, but simply brokenness because of the relation to man. I see deep theological value for our current conversation on ecology! In taking part in the coming of the kingdom here, we should restore the relationship of man to creation, and so restore creation.

I believe that this still leave a lot of unanswered questions. But this is my 2 cents worth for now…

the food of the prophet

Elijah was fed by the crows at the Kerith Ravine. John the Baptist ate honey and grasshoppers. Jesus drank wine and feasted…food isn’t simply something random for these prophets, it’s intricately linked with their voice, their mission, their being as people reading the signs of their times and speaking the voice of God into their culture… or maybe that was it, it wasn’t speaking, but living the voice of God into their culture.

And in this food was central. For Elijah it was trusting on God to feed him, when all others was praying to Baal and the rain wasn’t coming. For John it was withdrawing from society, living of the land, I don’t know what the meaning of that is. For Jesus it was feasting with those who he wasn’t supposed to feast with. For us…?

For us it seems to be something that need to get us full. We say a short prayer to not feel bad, and then just eat. In a society where many are dying from malnutrition and lack of water, where all the earth moaning because of the way we mess up our ecology, with the massive amount of meat adding to that, cattle taking up too much space for too little food, and taking space that could have been used by plants that help the ecology rather than hinder. A society where those of differing class never eat together, a society where many spend more on restaurants for one dinner than others spend on food for a month. In this society, we must think more about what we eat. We need to think theologically about what we eat!

Orthodox-Emerging dialog

In the South-African emerging conversation, especially up here in Pretoria, we have the honor of Steve Hays, a deacon in the Orthodox church, taking part regularly. At the last Pretoria Emerging Cohort, I at one point said that Steve probably knows more about the emerging church than any of us, and I mean it! This guy has made a serious study of the emerging conversation.

So between Steve and myself we organized a meet-up between some emerging folks from up North (still much further South than most of the emerging conversation), the Orthodox congregation in Brixton Jo’burg (St Nicholas) and anyone else interested. After some facebooking on it and blogging about it, we got a fair number of people there, much more than I expected!

We attended Vespers, the Saturday evening service of the Orthodox Church, in preparation for Sunday morning. And Steve invited us for coffee afterwards – of which I must say, these Orthodox people know about food! If this is what coffee looks like, I’d love to be invited to lunch at some point!!!

Much need to be said about the hospitality of this congregation, about the way in which people coming in late (both visitors and members) can just slip in without anyone making a fuss about lateness. About the way in which they quickly afterwards linked up with the visitors, asked about our experience. I think the thing that for me stood out most, was how knowledgeable the members of the congregation was about their own theology and tradition! Father Cobus (not me, the priest of the congregation) said very little in our conversation, and in the company of a lot trained theologians (Orthodox teachers, students, priensts etc), many of the members took part in the discussion, explaining their understanding to us. About some of this I’m not yet sure whether this is to be attributed to the fact that it’s an Orthodox congregation, or a very small congregation, or both, but whatever the reason, I find this healthy.

Much of our conversation centered around the question of contextualization. The Orthodox Church hold dear the fact that they haven’t changed over the centuries, and the Emerging Church hold dear the fact that they are changing at a rapid pace (even though much of the change centers around rediscovering the ancient), and contextualizing the gospel within a post-modern environment. We have the emerging church because we have the believe that society is changing at a rapid rate, and that something is seriously wrong with the church. So, the question of contextualization seems to be of interest, but Andries have talked about that, so I’ll leave it for now.

Steve has blogged about the question of further dialogue, and the interest of the congregation that further dialogue. Within the emerging conversation there is quite an openness to listening to other churches, especially the ancient churches. The Catholics and Orthodox churches is highly respected by many who consider themselves emerging (although they will never make in in these hierarchical systems). So let me end of with a question which I think we’d need to answer for future dialogue:

Will this be a two way conversation? Does the emerging church have something that they need to learn from the Orthodox tradition? On this I can say “yes”. But does the Orthodox tradition have something to learn from the emerging conversation? The question would be whether the those who call themselves emerging should go and sit at the feet of the Orthodox tradition to learn from them, or would this be a conversation, where we learn from each other? Can the Orthodox Church ever be changed by a conversation with the emergents? At the meeting I felt like this would be impossible, but Steve has said that in some way they were challenged by our conversation.

Well, another post might appear from this on the topic of using space in our worship, but not today.

Others who have blogged on this:

Andries Louw

Reggie Nel

Steve Hays