Richard Beck on Brueggemann

Check out the promo videos, including this one where Beck talks about Brueggemann's influence on his book, Unclean. Beck on Brueggemann

We are going to have an outstanding conference at Streaming 2012: Mercy, Not Sacrifice. Help us get the word out. Bloggers, help us.

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The Circumstances of Allegiance

I would not be a Dallas Cowboys fan today if I hadn't become one when I was six years old. Jerry Jones would make me absolutely sick (because he turns my stomach fairly frequently as it is) if it weren't for Mel Renfro, Bob Hayes, Bob Lilly, Chuck Howley, Cornell Green, Don Perkins, Lee Roy Jordan, and so on. Jerry world, with its enormous grandiosity, second only to Jerry's own overgrown sense of himself, should make me root for the Redskins. But Don Meredith and Craig Morton and Jerry Rhome...

I teased my Auburn friends that they only won the national championship over my Ducks by using "professional" players. But truth be told, any team that benefitted from Nike's largesse as much as the Ducks do would put them automatically on my root against list, except for the fact that they are the Ducks. And that means Dan Fouts, Bobby Moore (aka, Ahmad Rashad), Russ Francis, Bobby Newland, and the memories of the afternoon sunshine on my face as I sat in the endzone at Autzen stadium as a boy. So, I'm hoping that Nike continues to pump massive amounts of money into the program that produced Dave Wilcox and Norm Van Brocklin.

So, this might be an essay on how loyal I am, the facts be damned. I will admit to believing bandwagon fans to be a lower species of human life. As a sports fan, I mate for life. But what really got me thinking about this was the way the word missional gets thrown around these days. It's almost like Jerry Jones owns the word now. But I've been down with missional long before it became the buzz word. I wish I could separate the word from its use, get the Cowboys a different owner, make the Ducks respectable without the Nike money printing press. Given that I can be a grumpy purist, its possible that I might be one of those guys fighting against the word (gasp) if it weren't for the fact that I found it when I did.

I've tried to learn to live constructively with my new circumstances. I've adapted the way I talk about things over time. I try not to use the term "missional church" so much now. And I try not to use it as a catch-all adjective meaning "good." "This lunch is so missional." I try to use it these days to talk about a new missional era. And I'm convinced that its use is still worth all the trouble. It refers to something that is with us, and will be for the unforeseeable future. More, change comes through new language, and the irritating aspects of the word can serve processes of transformation.  Still, its become harder to be a fan. So I guess what you want is that when you think of missional and me, think Tom Landry, not Jimmy Johnson.

The Good News of Repentance

My hunch is that few of us have had someone say, "Repent!" and received that as a positive thing. It sounds like scolding and none of us enjoy being scolded. But when Jesus announces the nearness of the Kingdom of God in Mark 1:15, the word repent is tied to the word gospel, or good news. "The time is fulfilled, the Kingdom of God is near; repent and believe the gospel."

I typically hear the word repent a little like the old song, "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." "You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I'm telling you why..." We receive it as a warning related to bad behavior. And when John the Baptist calls for repentance, its often attached to his dire warnings for the religious leaders who come to observe what is going on in the desert.

But I would point out precisely here that there were many who gladly received John's baptism of repentence. For them repentence was good news, and I think not because they felt particularly guilty about this or that sin. Rather, the appearance of an Elijah-type figure in the wilderness preaching baptism and forgiveness of sins signaled that the Kingdom of God might be finally coming. And that when the Kingdom of God comes, there might be a reversal of fortunes. The winners might be declared losers and the losers winners.

Jesus' announcement that the time is fulfilled and the Kingdom is near would certainly match this expectation. This announcement holds out the possibility that life might now be lived under different management. That regime change might be afoot. Those who benefit from the current power arrangements won't be happy, but those willing to turn their lives in the direction of the coming Kingdom of God will find themselves suddenly on the right side of history.

The Kingdom of God is not simply an improvement of conditions on the ground. The Kingdom of God is an alternative to those conditions. To belong to a new regime that exists as an alternative to all other power arrangements requires an entirely new set of commitments. To belong to the new age coming in the fullness of time necessitates more than change--it necessitates a turning, a reversal. One simply cannot stay the same and welcome the Kingdom of God.

So, repentance is the opportunity to align our lives with the interests of the coming reign of God. And to the extent that we believe that the Kingdom of God is peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, then the call to repentance will be received as good news. Repent and believe the good news.

Streaming: Biblical Conversations from the Missional Frontier

My main exposure to Rochester College before I became a faculty member here was the Sermon Seminary they used to host every May, directed by my friend David Fleer. It was a first rate event, bringing together the best in the areas of biblical scholarship and preaching (homiletics). My favorite year was the year Walter Brueggemann and Paul Scott Wilson presented on preaching from the Psalms.

Well, in my duties as Director of the Resource Center for Missional Leadership, I have been asked to revive the May (16-18) seminar, though with a different focus. Instead of preaching, we will be bringing the best of biblical scholarship into dialogue with missional leadership. We are calling the event, Streaming: Biblical Conversations from the Missional Frontier.

Before I explain the name of the event, let me tell you who we've lined up thus far to be on the program. You have to start with Miroslav Volf. Volf is the Henry V. Wright professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School. He is without a doubt one of today's most important theological voices. His book, Exclusion and Embrace, is a profound theological reflection on human identity born out of his own experience with the Balkan conflicts. He will be presenting material from his forthcoming book on reading Scripture theologically.

We also have Scot McKnight coming. He teaches New Testament at North Park Seminary in Chicago and has become a widely read author on a number of important issues. He has been particularly involved in conversations related to the Emerging Church movement. His recent book on Scripture, The Blue Parakeet, is a delightful and accessible read. He will be presenting material from his forthcoming commentary on the Book of James.

We will have several others on the program, but we are particularly pleased to have Volf and McKnight kick off the renewal of our May seminar.

But what about this name?  Well, naming an event is no easy thing. And naming it with a participle is a bold move, if I say so myself. Streaming. But we have five things in mind that come together in one image.

First, streaming is a commonplace word in the world of digital communication. Events are "streamed" live across the internet. It gives us some cultural cache, if you will, and in a way that we like. It says live and dynamic. It says participatory and communicative. So, there's that.

Second, we want to use the term in an unconventional way to suggest the activity of navigating a stream. If we are in a new missional era, then we need images related to frontiers or adventure. So, we have in mind here a group of adventurers "streaming" through whitewater.

Third, we like the fact that stream is moving. You never step into the same steam twice. It comes from someplace and it is going somewhere. It is a temporal image, connoting both a past and a future. It's a nice way to think about the relationship between God, scripture, and the world.

Fourth, streams gifure fairly prominently in Scripture. You can hardly open your Bible without getting wet. And a stream in Scripture is a refreshing thing--life giving.

Fifth, streaming also evokes a picture of pilgrimage--a journey together toward sacred space, like the OT images of the nations streaming to Zion.

My friends have already pointed out to me less-than-helpful ways that streaming might be understood. My friends are philistines. And so we will limit our imaging to the five things I've listed above.

So, anyway, I'm thrilled about our new event and hope some of you will make plans to join us this coming May. Hopefully, we'll have a new webpage up soon with more detailed info on the event.

Missional Worship

One of the things I kind of like about the Missional Church conversation is that it hasn't added fuel to the "worship wars." The missional church literature doesn't seem to care if you use power point, sit on sofas, or have someone painting while the sermon is happening. Nothing against these things, per se. But the missional church literature has not been that interested in worship forms, styles, etc.

There may be several reasons for this. First, many of the missional writers are mainliners who take a certain liturgical shape for granted. They don't invent worship every Sunday like those of us in the free churches. Second, and I think more significantly, missional is interested in culture around a different set of issues than other renewal impulses. Missional begins with a question of social location--where does the church find its place after-Christendom? How should the church interpret its liminal status? This is a different question than the one asked, for instance, by the emerging church crowd. They begin with issues related to postmodernity. What counts for knowledge? And how do we relate to the things we experience? These questions lend themselves more immediately to worship, particularly worship aesthetics.

Still, I think this hole in the missional church conversation is regrettable. First, it fails to help us see how our worship patterns over time have assumed Christendom. I spent two years worshipping with an Episcopal church in St. Paul and loved the experience. However, it was also clear to me how much of what happened assumed a particular cultural expression of the church and would tend to perpetuate the same. Worship is hardly exempt from the lingering effects of Christendom, even in the free churches.

So, where would the missional impulse take worship? I have several specific suggestions, but I want to start wider, with a bigger picture. First, the missional impulse would assume a public horizon for worship. In the churches with which I sojourn, the primary horizon is private. Worship is seen as a part of the inner life of the church and directed toward the inner life of the individual. Missional worship would assume a broader landscape. It would worship in the presence of and for the sake of the world.

Second, missional worship would integrate all of life. The gap between Sunday and Monday mornings is significant in the imagination of the typical church goer. Sunday is religious. Monday is secular. Sunday has special rules. Monday has a different set of rules. Sunday is for inspiration for living in the real world. Monday is the real world. A missional impulse would see Sunday as more than just an inspirational tune-up for Monday. It would be rehearsal for life on Monday.

Third, in keeping with this integrating impulse, missional worship would welcome the stranger. This would require that the table find its place at the center of the worship experience. This is the place of God's welcome. We don't determine the guest list. The practice of welcome around the Lord's table produces a certain kind of character. It should be a place where faith, hope, and love are put on public display.

There might very well be other, large, organizing impulses for worship that might fly under the banner "missional." But I'll start with these and see where they lead.

Green Day on a Sunday

It's not Dylan on a Sunday, but I found myself listening to Green Day's new cd, 21st Century Breakdown, on a plane from Seattle to Chicago today. I like it. And there's a big piece of me that says I shouldn't. I like the punk beat and the guitars. Just do. And I like that the vocals are melodic and full of great hooks. Whatever they're singing about must be fun.

But its not fun, not really. It's sad and violent and full of anger. And so a big part of me says I shouldn't like that. But I kinda do, and for some of the same reasons I like the missional church literature. I know, what do Green Day and Douglas John Hall have in common?

Both are railing against Christendom. Green Day is music from below (where the Magnificat comes from). It's the music of the food stamps generation, buried beneath the massive layers of Western society. There's no making peace here. Making peace with the powers that be is a choice for death. In Green Day's case, refusing to go along, naming the disease of it all, dressing it all in death and rage, is the only way to live.

What is striking to me about Green Day is not so much the language of violence and protest, or even the obvious slams on religion and church, but the way sacred language is turned on its head. The words of redemption appear in their lyrics more than most artists I listen to. And I think that someone ought to sing the hallelujah in this world precisely the way they do, to keep church folk from singing it too easily.

I don't want to live many Sundays in their world, but today I'm glad I did.

I can't see a thing in the video
I can't hear a sound on the radio
in stereo in the static age

Hey, hey it's the static age
This is how the west was won
Hey, hey it's the static age millennium

All I want to know is a god damned thing
Not what's in the medicine
All I want to do is I want to breathe, batteries are not included
What's the latest way that a man can die?
Screaming hallelujah?
Singing out "the dawn's early light"

The silence of the rotten,forgotten
Screaming at you

I can't see a thing in the video
I can't hear a sound on the radio
in stereo in the static age

A Missional Tale

In the constant quest to define missional, I offer the following:

Tonight I attended an inaugural ball in our neighborhood. Well, ball is a relative term. It wasn't gowns and tuxes or anything fancy. It was in our neighborhood community center with its requisite linoleum floor and fluorescent lights. There were coats and hats and gloves and puddles from the snow clinging to the bottoms of our boots. And there were children and potato chips and brownies and cold cuts. And there was a band. Not a Tommy Dorsey kind of band. But something closer to a jug band. An Appalachian folk music band with a caller to help us folk dance.

It was an introverts nightmare. I knew less than half the people there. And I was going to be "dancing" with them. But I was brave because of the joy of the day. I have friends who were in the grandstands at the inaugural in DC today. That made me feel closer to the event. Being at something where people were celebrating this momentous day was the right thing to do, even if it wasn't quite my thing.

Now here's the deal. There's something about traditional dances that bring people together. I admit that when we did it in seventh grade I thought it to be the worst idea in the history of human interaction. But in just minutes, we are all fumbling around together, linking arms, holding hands, and welcoming each other. You can't help but smile and feel a part. I've participated in traditional dances in Brazil, and nothing I have ever done has broken down barriers faster.

I wonder, given the boundary crossing nature of the gospel, why there aren't more stories of Christians dancing. Well, ok, I know why. I'm just saying that this was as sacramental as breaking bread. I happen to prefer the Brazilian folk dances to the Appalachian ones. They're just more fun. But they do the same thing. They create community.

My buddy, John Ogren, organized this thing. And if you know John, you know anything he's involved with will include prayer. So, we wrote prayers through the evening on brightly colored strips of cloth and hung them on a string that crossed the room. And after a good deal of dancing we paused for prayer. John had invited a young Muslim woman working on a Master's degree in Islamic studies to pray. She sang the first chapter of the Koran and then translated it for us. It was beautiful.

Then my friend Lucy, a PhD student in pastoral theology from Kenya (her study carel is right next to mine), prayed in Swahili, and then in English. And Lucy can pray. And she did, a prayer filled with scriptural allusions on behalf of America and all the world.

And then a Jewish woman prayed. She prayed from Scripture, first in English, then in Hebrew. And like the others, she prayed for the momentum of this occasion, that it would roll into a time of peace.

I was deeply moved by each prayer. (They were better, in my estimation, than either prayer at the inauguration. Let the Yellow be mellow? And that was the better of the two prayers). I have no idea the faith commitments, or lack thereof, represented in the room. But after you've do-sie-doed with someone, prayer isn't as threatening.

This was missional to me for several reasons. It was in public space, not a gathering or a club or like minded people behind socially bounded space. It was public, an ecclesia. It was a vision of the future of God when all will dance together to the sweet strains of heaven. It was joy filled, an event occasioned by good news. It required no expertise or pride of position to participate. We crossed boundaries, welcomed strangers, and practiced peace. It took our entire person to participate; heart, mind, and body. It was relentlessly ecumenical and respectful. And God was right in the thick of it. There was prayer.

My heart is full today. It is such a vibrant day. It is so hopeful. And I know other days will be darker and less full of promise. But today touched something rare, and I went to an inaugural ball I will always remember.

Missional Transformation, 3

I've spent a lot of time and energy getting congregations and students to understand evangelism differently. Specifically, I've tried to get them to think of evangelism in relation to the gospel of the Kingdom of God, rather than a particular view of the atonement. It's my theory that our practices of evangelism are tied to our understanding of the gospel, and that most church members define the gospel almost exclusively as penal substitutionary atonement (psa).

The problems with psa are numerous, but suffice it to say at this point that its not the only way to understand the meaning of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Changing evangelistic imagination related to psa, however, I have found to be a very difficult thing.

My earliest efforts were aimed at giving people more information. I taught them other theories of atonement, used the concept of theological worlds, explored various metaphors for salvation, all to little effect. New information was simply not potent enough to change a very entrenched imagination.

So, I began inviting people into experiments related to the Kingdom of God. In my graduate courses, I asked students in small groups to pick a pattern of repentance related to the Kingdom. Some chose to keep sabbath, others to avoid violent speech, still others to practice hospitality. Now we were getting somewhere. They had real experiences to talk about, amazing experiences. But when they turned to say something meaningful about these experiences, they talked about them in their old categories.

So, I added intentional practices of reflection and articulation to their experiments in repentance. Wow, what a difference. The stories were poignant and full of the language of salvation. They could connect sabbath, for instance, to living in the death and resurrection of Jesus. They could speak about how this required a Spirit filled community. They could talk in concrete terms precisely the shape their salvation was taking.

All that to say, we tend to think of transformation in terms of information and application. But people have great capacity to absorb new information into existing imaginative constructs leaving us far short of transformation.

Transformation requires new experiences, intentional reflection, and articulation. My friend Pat Keifert often reminds congregations that people don't learn much from experience in and of itself. They learn from articulated reflection on experience. My students are evidence that this is indeed the case.

Experience-->reflection-->articulation allows for a new narrative to emerge. We get transformation when we learn to tell a new story about ourselves. This is deep structure change and won't come simply by adding programs or tinkering with our worship.

My sense in many churches is that we expect very little from our members in terms of experience. We expect them primarily to experience Sunday morning worship. Anything else is kind of like the options we could add to an automobile. They're nice, but not essential. But even less do we ask church members to reflect in any kind of deliberate way on their experience. And we provide few venues for articulation for all but a few of our members. We are poorly equipped in terms of practices related to transformation.