When the Pieces Fall Into Place Comes the Hallelujah

I've been reading Paul Ricouer off and on for several years now, and rather intensely the past few years. I found Ricouer in Brueggemann's footnotes and have sensed an importance to his work related to my own. That sense has intensified with my PhD work. My prof, Pat Keifert, studied with Ricouer (does that make me a grandson of sorts?) and he has drawn me deeper into his writings. I'm in dissertation stage, and so am about to have to say something fairly coherent about how I'm using Ricouer's work. And I'll just say that has been a daunting prospect until this week.

I'm re-reading From Text to Action and Oneself as Another this week. It's my third time through Text to Action. And this time, pages that have gone unmarked in previous readings have jumped out of the book and grabbed me by the throat. Words that were only signs marking some impenetrable world have now become active agents in a world emerging in my reading.

It's not because I'm smarter. I'm convinced of that. I'm at least aware that my mental-acuity-stamina is reduced. I used to be able to do heavy lifting brain work for the better part of a day. I have to pace myself now. I often feel limited these days, and those limitations seem not related to the amount of information I have, but the capacity to make anything useful of the deeper ends of the pool in which I find myself swimming (or drowning).

What has happened is that thing that comes with time and repetition. The forest has imposed itself on the trees. And its not because I lined out all the arguments in some kind of progression. It happened around one "aha" moment related to the importance of texts for Ricouer. I could have written the sentence, "Ricouer's contributions to phenomenology have to do with distanciation related to his notions of understanding texts." But this week that move in Ricouer, away from Dilthey and subsequently Gadamer, has allowed the scales to fall from my eyes. What once was an overwhelming data set has suddenly become an orienting picture.

This has happened to me before, and I'm sure to all of us in one way or another. But sometimes it seems like it will never come. A new world is coming at us so fast and hard that we feel mostly incompetent. This is especially true, I think, of academic or professional programs that cram a lot into a small temporal window. There's really no other way to do it, but when you're in it you feel like you're drinking from a fire hose. I know students in my grad program right now are reporting a similar sensation.

But the "aha" is faithful. It appears to those whom it has chosen. And its appearing is glorious.

Missional Transformation, Part 6

Listening.

There is no more powerful action with regard to transformation. Listening.

Churches listen poorly. They talk a lot, but they seldom do a good job of listening. Most churches do not have active processes of listening. Few churches have the capacity, either with regard to skill, process or motivation, to have a congregational conversation. Communication takes place in the form of conclusions. Leaders tell others of their conclusions, and the others tell leaders what they think of their conclusions. In neither case, is there understanding. And often, there is conflict.

Missional transformation is fundamentally a listening process, or we might say a discerning process. There are two reasons for this. First, we are listening for the Spirit who leads and empowers us with regard to God's mission. We are discerning God's mission, not solving congregational problems. Second, we believe that the Spirit of God is among the people of God. The wisdom of the Spirit of God is not the province of a few leaders, but of the entire congregation. At the congregation I served in Oregon, we had an expression, leaders don't decide the will of God, they discern it. One implication of this saying is that they couldn't determine what God was up to without listening to his people.

This bears some stress. Some people when they hear me talk about communal discernment worry about group think that overrides the voice of dissent. The heroic individual is the only cure for the communal discernment blues. I would simply respond that because we are seeking the voice of God, and not the will of the majority, the voice of dissent is particularly important to processes of discernment. Apart from a productive role for dissent, there is no Christian community.

Second, I would say that because we are humans discerning the will of God in something as messy as space and time, all of our judgments are provisional. We must decide and act, otherwise we cannot prove what is the will of God, what is good, acceptable and perfect. But this deciding and acting is always subject to further review. I like Luke Johnson's line here: We need modesty before the mystery. A congregation can never see itself as having discovered the final word.

So, I want to suggest four habits of listening toward missional transformation. First, Dwelling in the Word. I learned Dwelling in the Word from the folks at Church Innovations (CI), the organization Pat Keifert leads (http://www.churchinnovations.org). Basically, this is group lectio divina, a way of reading Scripture meditatively with others. The process is simple. Select a text to dwell in together over time. We always begin with congregations dwelling in Luke 10 for a year. Someone reads the text aloud. Silence is observed. The group shares in pairs, and then with the group as a whole. The sharing to the big group, however, has one stipulation. Participants are to share, not what they said, but what their partner noticed.

Dwelling in the Word emphasizes that Scripture gets first word in discerning the voice of the Spirit. It involves every member listening--the Spirit of God is among the people of God. And it models an engagement with Scripture different than what we typically do. We tend to use Scripture as a tool, as a way to solve a problem. We want to master the text. Dwelling is a more submissive practice, inviting Scripture to master us through a prolonged sojourn.

Second, I think leaders need to be constantly about the task of appreciative inquiry. Appreciative inquiry is a particular kind of listening that builds upon the actual stories of appreciation that already exist in a congregation's life. An appreciative inquiry question, always begins with the words, "Can you tell me about a time when..." Transformation is a narrative enterprise, and people have powerful stories to tell. And, the very act of asking a good question is already an act of change.

Third, a congregation should be in the practice of interviewing members on a periodic basis. Not everyone needs to be interviewed. The interviews do not need to represent the demographics of the congregation to be informative. They should, however, involve persons with different levels of involvement with the congregation (what CI calls family, inside strangers, and outside strangers). The questions should be in a direction decided by the leadership, but the questions themselves should not be determined by the leadership of the congregation. If discovery processes are sensed in any way to be tied to a predetermined outcome, you will not get honest communication.

Fourth, congregations should have regular conversations or forums. The goal should be something between a business meeting with a lot of reporting and an open mic gripe session. Neither accomplish much listening. I know of a congregation that gave a series of Sunday evenings (one a quarter) to listening around certain issues. One night they heard stories of families with special needs children, another the stories (anonymously reported) of what it was like to suffer from depression as a Christian. Sharing took place around tables. People got to share things that otherwise would never be known. They were powerful meetings.

The more practice a congregation gets having conversations like these, the safer people feel and the more likely authentic communication can take place in times of anxiety and conflict. And anxiety and conflict are just a part of any meaningful transformation.

This is the point. Listening as a way of life takes practice, the development of habits. These habits pay off big in times of transition and create the space necessary for discerning the Spirit of God.

Missional Transformation, 5

I know the pressures of leadership in a congregation. I know how bottom line thinking can dominate a leadership's imagination. I know that in spite of our best intentions to be other than this, we tend to equate success only in terms of numbers. I know how much energy is spent trying to attract more members. I know it like a nagging cough, like a limp or a birthmark. I've even known it like a cancer, like a siren's song.

MANDATORY DISCLAIMER: It is not wrong to want your church to grow, even numerically. It is not a virtue in and of itself, or a mark of faithfulness, to get smaller.

Having said that, there is a prior question that must command the attention of a congregation than the question, "How can we attract new members?" It is the missional question, "What is God's preferred future around here?"

Now, I know there is a way of understanding God's future so that those two questions yield the same answer. This perspective views the ultimate purposes of God in relation only to the destiny of individual souls. All God cares about is the tote board of who is in or out. Individual status is the only thing that matters under the heading of salvation. The only thing that matters for the church, therefore, is claiming individuals. The logical extension of this kind of individualism is to think of the church primarily as a support group for individuals. What kinds of programs will attract as many individuals as possible?

This view of salvation, however, is not the biblical view. Salvation is not a status conferred upon individuals--not primarily. Salvation is a reign, a rule, a way of ordering reality that makes it clear that the one who is crucified is Lord of all. The resurrection of Jesus and the presence of the Holy Spirit are God's guarantees that there is a day in the future when all things will correspond to the intentions of God.

There is nothing we can do about the kingdom of God. We cannot build it or add to it or diminish it. It has been established in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It's reality is secure in the future of God. This is God's salvation in which we are called to participate. We belong to that day and serve its interests in the power of the Spirit now.

If this is the case, then mission becomes larger than just evangelism. The question is not just how many people can we get in our building on Sunday. The question becomes, how can our life together show that we belong to the great day of God's salvation?

I've been working with a little meditation to help people get a sense of this. It's not complete by any means. More pictures could be added. The main point here is that our vision for mission is necessarily eschatological, and our view of that is typically way too small.

God has established a day in the future when all of humanity will gather around one table, will constitute one family all recognizing God as Father. This is our salvation. We belong to that day.

Because of Jesus and through the power of the Spirit we experience that future today…

not fully but in ways that are undeniably connected to that future hope…

and we live together a way of life that is only explainable by our belief that that day is real…


God has established a day when we will fully enjoy his presence. Sin and death will no longer separate us from God. This is our salvation. We belong to that day.

Because of Jesus and through the power of the Spirit we experience that future today…

not fully but in ways that are undeniably connected to that future hope…

and we live together a way of life that is only explainable by our belief that that day is real…


God has established a day when all of creation will be set free from its bondage to decay, when God’s good order will once again be seen in a new creation. This is our salvation. We belong to that day.

Because of Jesus and through the power of the Spirit we experience that future today…

not fully but in ways that are undeniably connected to that future hope…

and we live together a way of life that is only explainable by our belief that that day is real…


God has established a day when nations will stream to God’s holy mountain to learn only from him. His teachings will reach to the coastlands, filling all the earth. This is our salvation. We belong to that day.

Because of Jesus and through the power of the Spirit we experience that future today…

not fully but in ways that are undeniably connected to that future hope…

and we live together a way of life that is only explainable by our belief that that day is real…


God has established a day when there will be no more war, nor weapons of war. This is our salvation. We belong to that day.

Because of Jesus and through the power of the Spirit we experience that future today…

not fully but in ways that are undeniably connected to that future hope…

and we live together a way of life that is only explainable by our belief that that day is real…


God has established a day when each will be filled and satisfied, where hunger and want will be no more. This is our salvation. We belong to that day.

Because of Jesus and through the power of the Spirit we experience that future today…

not fully but in ways that are undeniably connected to that future hope…

and we live together a way of life that is only explainable by our belief that that day is real…



God has established a day when we will have rest, when toil and struggle will no longer mark our existence and our life can be a life for others. This is our salvation. We belong to that day.

Because of Jesus and through the power of the Spirit we experience that future today…

not fully but in ways that are undeniably connected to that future hope…

and we live together a way of life that is only explainable by our belief that that day is real…

Missional Transformation, 4

In the first three posts, I've talked mostly about transformation in general. The things we trust to make a difference are usually poor catalysts for transformation. Which is an odd way of saying it in the first place--the things we trust, rather than the person we trust.

There are many different ways to be transformed. We've got that word missional in front of our phrase. What makes transformation missional?

I often hear the word attractional used as the opposite of missional. In fact, I sometimes here it coming out of my own mouth. The difference being that the first works to "attract" consumers, the second views the church sent out among others. But this doesn't get it quite right. Missional churches still gather, and there's nothing wrong with being attractive (although treating people as religious consumers is highly problematic).

The difference has more to do with the imagination related to mission. A missional church is always discerning what God is up to in the world. I know this sounds really obvious at one level, but it really is a fairly significant statement. It might best be described as the difference between a straight line and a triangle.

Too often, the church sees itself in a straight line relationship to the world. The line goes something like God-church-world, with the church simply receiving the things of God and passing them along to the world. There is little need for discernment of God with the world, since the church receives the gospel as a fixed content to pass on. All that is left in terms of mission is strategy. How do we take what we've received and effectively transmit it? The church is in mission to the world, and the church becomes the primary, active agent in mission.

A triangle, on the other hand, is interactive. The relationships between God, church, and world are mutually informing and each element is constitutive in some sense for the others. In other words, there is no church apart from both God and world. There is no picture of future hope for the world apart from God and church. God is revealed in Jesus Christ in relation to both church and world. In this triangle, the church does not simply assume that it has a monopoly on God. It does not simply take God to the world, it also hopes to discover God there, in partial and fragmentary ways to be sure, but there nonetheless. This requires more than just strategy, it requires discernment. The church is in mission with the world, and God is the primary active agent. Discernment in this sense is properly spiritual work.

The shift from strategy to discernment is huge in so many ways. Chief among these is the way we view persons. When the church's engagement with the world is primarily strategic, then people are viewed as objects or targets of mission. They become "Saddleback Sam," a demographic, an abstraction. The church's logic become instrumental and mechanistic. Communication aims at effectiveness rather than understanding. The church too often seeks fusion to overcome otherness, rather than communion precisely through otherness.

Discernment requires a listening posture, a certain amount of humility. It requires that others be taken seriously on their own terms. It values otherness as the possibility of freedom and openness that allows God's Spirit to move effectively among us.

What is required for this kind of missional discernment? Many things. But one thing chief among them is hospitality. Hospitality is more than just entertaining others or being friendly. It is being open to the stranger, being interruptible. In my work with congregations, we dwell in Scripture, and often we spend a year dwelling in Luke 10. One of the values of Luke 10 is the demonstration there that God's hospitality often occurs on someone else's turf. Just as Jesus becomes our host ultimately by being our guest, so the church expresses the welcome of God for all by eating at someone else's table. This is mission.

This requires a pretty big shift in congregational imagination. I like to describe the shift in terms of belonging. We spend a lot of energy as a congregation trying to figure out how to get "them" to belong to "us." We have less imagination for trying to figure out how in Jesus' name we belong to our neighbors. The first imagination is instrumental and strategic. The second is more properly incarnational.

So, missional transformation necessarily will involve experiments in hospitality, fully expecting that the persons we have not yet met may well be new partners in the mission of God.

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.