Aside from dealing with the changes involved in receiving coverage in new ways, the kind of news presented will shift to fit the medium more appropriately. Breaking news will be available online. Former printing partners (dioceses or congregations) now have the ability to tailor their publication to a far greater degree than the old system allowed. A new quarterly print publication will offer more opportunity for reflection and in-depth conversation than is possible in a daily or even monthly publication.
This has significant connections to evangelism – the ways in which we tell the good news of Jesus. Similar changes are needed in the ways in which we tell good news in our own communities, to those who know little or nothing of the gospel. We can no longer think we are doing evangelism simply by waiting for people to come to church on Sunday morning – that isn’t adequate in most of the contexts in which the Episcopal Church exists, if it ever was.
Increasing percentages of the population around us don’t know who we are or why we exist. We need to find new ways of telling the old, old story – ways that are congruent with the joys and challenges of the people and societies around us.
On the whole this is good. Especially check out the link to the Diocese of Bethlehem (northeastern Pennsylvania)‘s evangelism resources - good stuff.
The idea that listen is an important part of evangelism is critical. The Evangelical world is awakening to this fact. Listening for what God is already doing in a person’s life is crucial to the process (for example, it is good to know if the person you are talking to believes in God or not - talking about Jesus to one who does not can be a waste of time).
Telling one’s story is also important, if for no other reason, it is very hard to argue against someone’s experience.
But there is an obvious precondition for telling your story, and that is that you have seen Jesus in your story. If Jesus is not a part of your story, then you are not doing “evangelism.” Vague stories about “the Spirit” are not evangelism, either. The “Holy Spirit” is, on the other hand, in the mystery of the Trinity, the same God as is Jesus. Looking at the archetypal stories of the Holy Spirit in Scripture, we see that this is no warn fuzzy sort of story. Yes, the HS ministers God’s love to us, but also brings conviction of sin and sends us out into the world in witness and service.
So by all means, tell your story, but insure it is Jesus story first and foremost.
]]>It was Sunday morning in my scruffy Brooklyn, N.Y., neighborhood, and I was wearing a dress. Walking to the subway, I ran into a friend heading home from yoga class. She wore sweats and carried her mat over her shoulder. “Where are you going so early all dressed up?” she asked, chuckling. “To church?” We shared a laugh at the absurdity of a liberal New Yorker heading off to worship.
The real joke? I totally was.
Inside the church, it’s cool and quiet. I read the Collect of the day in the Book of Common Prayer, which urges us: “While we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure.” My recent layoff no longer seems like the end of the world. I take Communion and exchange the peace and listen to the sermon. As I’m walking back up the aisle, I feel reoriented and calmer, the indignities of the week shift into perspective.
These moments are not only sacred; they are secret. Outside, on the steps of the downtown Manhattan church, I think I see someone familiar coming down the sidewalk, and I bolt in the other direction.
Why am I so paranoid? I’m not cheating on my husband, committing crimes or doing drugs. But those are battles my cosmopolitan, progressive friends would understand. Many of them had to come out—as gay, as alcoholics, as artists in places where art was not valued. To them, my situation is far more sinister: I am the bane of their youth, the boogeyman of their politics, the very thing they left their small towns to escape. I am a Christian.
Read it all here.
]]>
Rowan’s vision for development
Can giving to the poor be seen not simply as alleviating the suffering of others, but about receiving a gift in return?
* Mark Vernon
Rowan Williams has called for a broadening of the development agenda, so that secular agencies working in developing countries might become more fluent in the language of faith. Conversely, he stressed, faith-based communities must be more open to the imperatives of the “development establishment.” Learning from each other would not only be good for development. It might make possible the “distribution of dignity”, alongside the establishment of rights, he said.The Archbishop of Canterbury has a remarkable ability to highlight key issues of our day, issues that many then recognise, even though they don’t share his faith commitment. He has done so again with his analysis of the work of development. It came at the culmination of a series of RSA-sponsored lectures entitled New Perspectives on Faith and Development. (He also achieved what must be a rare eclecticism for public talks, commending to his audience both a papal encyclical by Benedict XVI and a volume written by George Monbiot.)
Williams’s analysis is premised on the observation that there has been, and remains, a longstanding unease between the development establishment and faith communities.
read the rest at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/nov/13/rowan-development-aid-faith
]]>We just had a really stimulating conference here at Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge PA on the relationship between what is called The Emerging Church and the Great Tradition and what role Anglicanism plays now and could play in the future with this new movement in the church. The Emergent Church is a term that characterizes a wide spectrum of Christians and churches often composed of young adults that are seeking an “ancient-future” way of being the church. These young Christians often come out of Evangelical and Pentecostal circles, though there are refugees from the Mainline Churches as well, and they are looking for something more significant than the trendy consumerist relevance that has characterized many of the approaches to reaching a secularized society in the Twentieth Century. It is a very disparate movement and includes examples that resonate deeply with the orthodoxy of the ages and other examples that seem, as one of the conference presenters George Sumner said, the latest installment in the long book of Gnosticism. (In fact a book I would recommend for self described emergent types is Against the Protestant Gnostics by Phillip J. Lee.)
As I listened to the themes that were attracting these young Christians: a more narrative understanding of the message of the Bible, an interest in ancient practices of prayer and spiritual discipline, a turn toward the writings of the earliest Christian centuries of the Patristic period, an interest by formerly free church types in sacramental theology and in the theology of the church, I was struck by the way in which this movement is revamping much of what was good about the story of the church and theology in the Twentieth Century. At the end of the conference the Trinity faculty members present were asked to reflect on a series of questions one of which was, “where are we now?”
I think we are in a moment when there is a fresh wind of the Holy Spirit moving to renew the ecumenical church. The Twentieth Century saw a series of movements in the theology and the life of the church which were clearly movements of the Spirit. The Century started with the great missionary gathering in Edinburgh with the vision of winning the world for Christ in one generation. There was the movement of Biblical Theology and the turn toward the narrative represented in figures like Karl Barth. There was the movement of Liturgical Theology which produced among other things the 1979 American Book of Common Prayer. There was a new interest in the mission of the church to the poor and the marginalized. There was the Charismatic revival that swept through all the churches including the Roman Catholic Church and which had leaders of the stature of Cardinal Suens. All of these movements in some way brought with them a painful consciousness of the brokenness of the body of Christ as it faced the challenge of an increasingly hostile and secularized world. Out of the renewal in theology, liturgy and mission came a new desire for ecumenical healing and partnership. The apogee of this convergence was the formation of the World Council of Churches, the production of the consensus on Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry in Lima Peru, and the formation of the Church of South India. It is striking how the saints of the ecumenical convergence of the Twentieth Century are the figures that interest the emergents of the Twenty First the most. Karl Barth, Lesslie Newbigin, Michael Ramsey, Yves Congar, Alexander Schmemann were names that were invoked constantly during the course of this conference.
During the Twentieth Century God gave to the broken and fractured global church a gift of the Holy Spirit, an ecumenical moment of mission and renewal. It was for the most part squandered and has been allowed to fall to the ground and especially by the daughter churches of the Reformation in the old Christian homelands including Anglicans. It seems to me that God is doing in the Emergent Church movement something that He does over and over. When His gift is rejected by the people He has prepared to receive it, He seeks out a new people. So it is that sons and daughters of Anabaptists and Pentecostals are being drawn to the Great Tradition. It is a moment for repentance for those of us in the historic churches which have stewarded the Great Tradition but have lost touch with the life which generates the tradition and which carries it forward. It is also a moment of testing for that which is emerging. Will they marginalize doctrine and the labor of seeking a consensus in faith and order? Will they succumb to the motto that deeds unite and doctrine divides and then find themselves in the midst of church dividing controversy with no deep doctrinal consensus to guide? Will they be lured into trivial and faddish relevancy and all too worldly politics at the expense of a more profound service of peace and justice? Will the established churches who are in a panic about their declining influence in the culture repent of quick fixes and pandering to culture and engage with a new generation in a deep renewal of the roots of Christian wisdom and practice? Will we all catch this new wind of the Spirit or let it pass us by? What an exciting time to be a Christian.
View the original post
IN April, Bob Sweeney’s son, Ryan, 13, suddenly announced he wanted to start going to church. While Mr. Sweeney had been quite religious once — in his 20s he’d taken an oath of celibacy with plans to spend his life as a Roman Catholic brother — he’d stopped attending church 40 years ago, and he and his wife had raised their son without religion.
“I said O.K., fine,” Mr. Sweeney recalled, assuming this was a whim. “We let the conversation end without coming to conclusions or decisions.” But later that week, on the ride home from middle school, Ryan said, “You know what we’re doing this weekend, Dad?”
“No,” Mr. Sweeney said, figuring he had forgotten one of his son’s track meets.
“We’re going to church,” Ryan said.
A bit further along the article offers the following statistic:
]]>The [recent Pew Trust] survey also found that 54 percent of children raised unaffiliated with a religion later choose one — three-fourths of them by age 24.
Here is the summarized gist of the research:
Dr. McKnight identifies eight characteristics of the emerging church. In condensed form I am sharing his observations:
First, emergents cannot accept the idea of Bible inerrancy. Verbal inerrancy will not stand modern critical examination in the study of languages. To assign fixed inerrancy to ancient documents written in the Hebrew and Greek used thousands of years ago stretches credibility.
Second, emergents have come to believe that the gospel that they have been taught is a caricature of the message of Jesus, rather than the real thing. Increasingly they are putting other Biblical writings in the background and have shown increasing interest in what Jesus said and did.
They ask “If we are followers of Jesus, why do we not live and preach his message?” In short, they are looking for a much more radical Christianity than they have found in the Evangelical (and mainline) churches.
Third, exposure to science in public education, universities and personal studies has led emergents to disown the conclusion that when the Bible and science appear to collide, science must take a back seat to the Bible.
In this conflict, emergents are not abandoning the Bible, but are raising critical questions about the Bible’s nature and content. This new bread of Christian remains quite committed to the Bible but they are very open to new ideas and understandings.
Fourth, emergents have become disillusioned by the clay feet of church leadership. It is not just the Jim Bakkers and the Jimmy Swaggarts, but the rank and file of church leadership.
Emergents compare what Jesus had in mind and what is going on in churches, and they see a need to start over. They want a fresh start with serious intent to follow Jesus.
Fifth, our public schools and our nation in general are insisting that we be truly multicultural. The churches’ teaching, that people not like us, are doomed, is not acceptable to emergents. They want a much broader definition of what it means to be accepted in the family of God.
Sixth, emergents are insisting that God be understood as totally gracious and loving. The angry, vengeful God that is sometime presented in both Old and New Testaments is not acceptable.
Seventh, acceptance of homosexuals in the family of God is common. Being pro-gay or anti-gay is not the issue. Emergents recognize that sexuality is far more complex than is generally recognized. To live in harmony with gay and lesbian friends and family members is a part of the emergent’s perspective.
Eighth, echoing the first named characteristic, emergents recognize the role that language plays in their understanding and practice of the Christian Faith. Theology is language bound. Language is a limited tool of communication.
If theology is language bound, it is also culturally shaped. To be rigidly exclusive does not make sense to emergent Christians.
Perhaps we Episcopalians will let the Spirit out of her domestic chores this Pentecost!
]]>Channel: United Methodist News Service Author: Diane Allen
Life in the Sichuan province in China changed on May 12, 2008.
The Longmenshan fault buckled and ripped in two, reducing towns and villages to rubble and collapsing school buildings like accordions.
The Sichuan Wenchuan earthquake, named for its epicenter, was the strongest in China for nearly 50 years. In just two minutes, the disaster would leave 70,000 dead, 400,000 injured, 18,000 missing and millions of people without homes and livelihoods.
Within five hours, the Amity Foundation—one of the main partners in China of the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries—had staff in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, to begin assessing damage in some of the worst affected counties. A day later, the United Methodist Committee on Relief issued an emergency appeal and dispatched $50,000 to Amity for relief work and rehabilitation efforts.
Another $10,000 was released to Amity for work with the children left parentless after the quake. An additional gift of $5,000 went to the Sichuan Christian Council for work with church communities, including the Sichuan Theological Seminary in Chengdu, which suffered structural damage.
A year later, the relief and rehabilitation efforts of the Amity Foundation have touched the lives of nearly 400,000 persons. Its projects have provided community grain-storage facilities, clean water and sanitation supply lines, materials to build homes and school equipment and rebuilt classrooms.
In another sign of recovery, Christians in Mianzhu, one of the hardest-hit counties, rejoiced at the construction of a new Protestant church to replace one damaged by the quake. Church attendance is up six-fold, with a worshipping congregation of 1,000 each Sunday.
View the original post
There is a book that everyone will be talking about—when it appears over a year from now. “American Grace: How Religion Is Reshaping Our Civic and Political Lives,” being written by Robert Putnam and David Campbell, is already creating a buzz. Putnam, the author of “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community,” is the preeminent academic expert on American civic life. Campbell is his rising heir. And the book they haven’t yet finished will make just about everyone constructively uncomfortable.
At a recent conference of journalists organized by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Putnam outlined the conclusions of “American Grace,” based on research still being sifted and refined. Against the expectations of hard-core secularists, Putnam asserts, “religious Americans are nicer, happier and better citizens.” They are more generous with their time and money, not only in giving to religious causes but to secular ones. They join more voluntary associations, attend more public meetings, even let people cut in line in front of them more readily. Religious Americans are three to four times more socially engaged than the unaffiliated. Ned Flanders is a better neighbor.
Against the expectations of many religious believers, this dynamic has little to do with the content of belief. Theology is not the predictor of civic behavior; being part of a community is. People become social joiners and contributors when they have friends who pierce their isolation and invite their participation. And religious friends, says Putnam, are “more powerful, supercharged friends.”
Yet this kind of religious affiliation has declined among many since World War II, especially among the young. The change was not gradual or linear. It arrived, according to Putnam, in “one shock and two aftershocks.”
The shock came in the 1960s. As conservatives have asserted, the philosophy of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll is an alternative to religious affiliation (though some of the rocking religious would dispute the musical part). Baby boomers were far less religious than their parents were at the same age—the probable result, says Putnam, of a “very rapid change in morals and customs.”
This retreating tide of committment affected nearly every denomination equally, except that it was less severe among evangelicals. While not dramatically increasing their percentage of the American population, evangelicals did increase their percentage among the religious in America. According to Putnam, religious “entrepreneurs” such as Jerry Falwell organized and channeled the conservative religious reaction against the 1960s into the religious right—the first aftershock.
But this reaction provoked a reaction—the second aftershock. The politicization of religion by the religious right, argues Putnam, caused many young people in the 1990s to turn against religion itself, adopting the attitude: “If this is religion, I’m not interested.” The social views of this younger cohort are not entirely predictable: Both the pro-life and the homosexual-rights movement have made gains. But Americans in their 20s are much more secular than the baby boomers were at the same stage of life. About 30 to 35 percent are religiously unaffiliated (designated “nones,” as opposed to “nuns”—I was initially confused). Putnam calls this “a stunning development.” As many liberals suspected, the religious right was not good for religion.
The result of the shock and aftershocks is polarization. The general level of religiosity in America hasn’t changed much over the years. But, as Putnam says, “more people are very religious and many are not at all.” And these beliefs have become “correlated with partisan politics.” “There are fewer liberals in the pews and fewer unchurched conservatives.”
The political implications are broad. Democrats must galvanize the “nones” while not massively alienating religious voters—which is precisely what candidate Barack Obama accomplished. Republicans must maintain their base in the pew while appealing to the young—a task they have not begun to figure out.
But Putnam regards the growth of the “nones” as a spike, not a permanent trend. The young, in general, are not committed secularists. “They are not in church, but they might be if a church weren’t like the religious right. . . . There are almost certain to be religious entrepreneurs to fill that niche with a moderate evangelical religion, without political overtones.”
In the diverse, fluid market of American religion there may be a demand, in other words, for grace, hope and reconciliation—for a message of compassion and healing that appeals to people of every political background. It would be revolutionary—but it would not be new.
View the original post
The “strict-church thesis” says that strict religions thrive while lenient religions decline. This has been a favorite among evangelicals since first articulated in Dean Kelly’s 1972 Why Conservative Churches Are Growing.
Perhaps the best defense of the thesis has been Santa Clara University’s Laurence R. Iannaccone’s influential 1994 essay, “Why Strict Churches Are Strong.”
Iannaccone argued that “strict churches proclaim an exclusive truth — a closed, comprehensive and eternal doctrine. They demand adherence to a distinctive faith, morality, and lifestyle. They condemn deviants, shun dissenters, and repudiate the outside world.” He concluded that doctrinal and behavioral strictness “increases commitment, raises levels of participation, and enables a group to offer more benefits to current and potential members.” Consequently, he says these groups “enjoy a competitive advantage over their opposites.”
We evangelicals have long chalked up our success to this thesis. People are leaving liberal, mainline churches, we say, because liberals have compromised the gospel, and people are flocking to evangelical churches precisely because we have remained true and firm in the faith.
But a new book — Holy Mavericks: Evangelical Innovators and the Spiritual Marketplace, by Shayne Lee and Phillip Luke Sinitiere (NYU) — argues that the strict-church thesis does not hold water. The authors look at five mega-ministries in broader evangelicalism, movements led by Joel Osteen, T. D. Jakes, Brian McClaren, Paula White, and Rick Warren. They examine these ministries through a marketplace approach to American religion, which analyzes spiritual supply and demand, marketing techniques, religious needs, and so forth.
A careful student of evangelicalism knows that only those outside the movement could possible think all these leaders represent the heart of evangelical faith. They would hardly recognize each other as evangelicals! And sifting church research through a narrow grid like market economy distorts as much as it reveals. But, still, it does reveal something.
And that something is this: The strict-church thesis needs revising. As the authors summarize: “We uncover little that is strict or demanding in our subjects’ messages or ministries, and yet four of their churches are among the largest in the country.” Instead, they argue that their success is due to effective marketing, meeting psychological needs, and appropriately addressing “the cultural tastes of potential clients.”
Despite my concerns about its larger argument, this study highlights an all too well-known trend in our movement. Many churches are growing because they preach a God of second and third and fourth chances, and a faith that gives palpable hope, joy, and acceptance. What’s not to like? Indeed, there are gracious aspects of the Christian faith. But let’s face it, the word strict does not apply. The Jesus who tells followers to sever offending hands, to let the dead bury themselves, to give one’s possessions to the poor, to take up the cross — well, he’s not easy to find in our churches these days.
The strictest Christian groups, in fact, are the smallest on the planet. Take monasteries or convents, with their high demands of poverty, chastity, and obedience. These theologically conservative and morally strict communities are not winning converts by the tens of thousands. As many people attend weekly services at Joel Osteen’s church (about 30,000) as there are Franciscan friars worldwide.
Or take the movement called “the new monasticism.” As reported in Christianity Today, in the last decade or so, some two dozen communities have been founded in inner cities across America. Young men and women, some single, some married, live in some of the poorest neighborhoods, together practicing the traditional spiritual disciplines while ministering to prostitutes, drug addicts, single mothers, and the homeless. You only see dozens following this path, not thousands.
This suggests that the more religiously strict a group is, the smaller it will be. This brings to mind those sayings about the narrow road and the few who are called.
As a former minister, I know how often a pastor has to weigh what needs to be said with what can be received. In a culture saturated with the therapeutic, fewer and fewer attenders can hear something challenging without “feeling unloved” or “having issues” with the church. Raising demands is a pretty good way to empty the pews. And pews need to be full if we’re going to pay rent and salaries and sustain a church’s ministries, all of which are quite worthy of funding.
This is the dilemma we evangelicals find ourselves in at the beginning of the 21st century — how to present the gospel in an emotionally and spiritually shallow culture. It is a commonplace that in this effort evangelicals have succumbed to the culture. So it may be time to move the conversation forward and suggest a practical solution: church shrink conferences. I’m not kidding.
Many pastors and lay leaders recognize that they are in a superficially successful church, and that it’s time to introduce the harder edges of the gospel. But how? How do we get comfortable people to listen to a gospel that includes a lot of discomfort? How do you deepen discipleship without introducing despair? How do you insist firmly on faithfulness without becoming legalistic?
Most important, how do you manage the loss in membership? That will happen. The more strictly you adhere to the teachings of Jesus, the smaller the church will “grow.” One of the most crucial skills of a military commander is, in the face of defeat, to lead a retreat that doesn’t turn into panic or a massacre. And one of the most crucial skills for pastors and church lay leaders is to manage church decline when people are leaving because they see, finally, what Jesus is asking of them. This is not a job for the faint of heart, and will require great wisdom to manage resources, personnel, and morale in such a time.
Evangelicals have become the unmatched experts in church growth, but often end up with a truncated gospel. If we are to live into the full counsel of God in the years to come, I believe we’ll need a few experts in church shrink.
View the original post
]]>First out of the donation bag were the chocolate Santa Clauses, long after the Christmas season was over. Next was a can of Campbell’s soup, three years past its expiration date. An assortment of foil-wrapped hotel coffee packets followed, then Halloween candy in a trick-or-treat bag, a jar of maraschino cherries, and a dented tin of sweetened condensed milk.
I was doing my monthly shift at the Glen Ellyn Food Pantry, housed in a church in an affluent Chicago suburb. While waiting for our clients to arrive, I sorted donations and stocked shelves. As I went through bag after bag, box after box—and threw into the trash what some people considered “good enough for the hungry”—I felt increasingly angry. I also felt ashamed.
I used to think these things were good enough, too.
Food pantries are often the mainstay of refugees, single moms who can’t make it on one paycheck, the disabled or mentally ill, and retirees on fixed incomes. As the economic crisis deepens, that clientele is changing. Food pantries saw a 30 percent average increase in emergency food requests in 2008, according to Ross Fraser, media relations manager of Feeding America (formerly known as America’s Second Harvest). The $657-million-revenue charity provides more than 2 billion pounds of groceries through 205 food banks that serve 63,000 food pantries, and estimates that it serves 25 million people who are at risk for hunger. Among these are 9 million children and almost 3 million senior citizens.
Of those who use the pantries, 36 percent live in households where at least one person is employed. Food pantries are seeing more of the working poor who can’t make ends meet on low wages, Fraser says, as well as the white-collar middle class who work in hard-hit industries such as the housing sector. Some states, such as New Hampshire, Florida, Massachusetts, and Ohio, have had a much higher spike in food pantry use, and the percentages could increase.
“If the economy continues to decline, it will just get worse,” Fraser says. “Millions of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. They are only one paycheck away from catastrophe.”
Understanding the Hungry
When I first volunteered at the food pantry five years ago, I had a vague sort of guilt about world hunger, brought on by newspaper headlines about children dying in Africa from malnutrition. Growing up, when I was exhorted to “think about the starving children in China” and clean my plate, I knew some people didn’t have enough to eat. In my family, the preparation of good food was a way of showing love, so the knowledge that some people went hungry haunted me in more than just a logical way. Volunteering at the food pantry seemed like a salve for my conscience.
The interdenominational pantry where I volunteer is supported by 17 churches in my town—Protestant and Catholic working together—as well as schools, businesses, and personal donations from the community. Last year, the pantry scheduled about 3,500 appointments for local families to pick up food. Clients must prove they live in Glen Ellyn or a bordering community, but do not have to show proof of need. They may visit up to six times a year, and no more than once a month. Emergency bags are also available for walk-ins at the discretion of the supervisor.
The client first chooses from a list of staple foods (meat, cheese, eggs, milk) that are bagged by volunteers. While waiting for his or her staples to be bagged, the client receives a basket to use to shop for other foods to supplement those basics. I began as a bagger, then moved to a shopper, helping clients one on one choose from the assortment of extras on the shelves.
View the original post