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missional church

Missional Drive Church?

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I was pretty impressed with this pastor who has started a ‘Drive In’ church. Wasn’t so much impressed that he’s doing a drive in church, that seems rather silly to me. I was impressed that he is choosing to do sermons outside in the Texas heat wave this summer. That is just insane.

Vans and trucks drove into the parking lot of Lovejoy High School to be part of “Sanctuary Under the Sky,” Rev. David Ray’s new drive-in church.

“The sound is transmitted over the car radio so they just tune into the frequency that it’s set to. They can hear, they’re encouraged to participate. Everything that the congregation is asked to do is printed in the bulletin,” said Ray.

Ray, pastor of Presbyterian Church of the Master, stands in the parking lot conducting the service as churchgoers watch through their dashboard windows.

What caught me by surprise with this story is that he was a Presbyterian pastor. Not the normal kind the norm of worship for a mainline minister. So as with any bored moment I went and looked up ‘drive in church‘ and come to realize, he doesn’t actually know how to look for others doing the same thing (claimed in article that he’s only one doing this that he’s aware of), because it seems other churches have driveinchurch.net websites. Turns out a Disciples of Christ church has been at this for almost 50 years. In their history this is their reasoning for a drive in church.

The purpose of these services was to reach a large number of people with the good news including tourists, the physically challenged and provide an opportunity for the whole family to worship together. The Drive-In Church is new and different, yet it is deeply spiritual and reverently worshipful. As our Pastor was quoted in The Washington Post in a recent article on our church. “We worship outdoors, by the sea as did Jesus.”

So has me wondering, is this like the first emergent / missional / emerging / post-modern church?

Or maybe, is the car such a comfort buffer that we prevent ourselves from ever actually being community because we never get in proximal distance to one another?

Unexamined Impulse is Prejudice | #missional

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My buddy Sam Davidson at Cool People Care highlighted this 10 courageous actions to building community in your neighborhood community. It had me thinking that, 1. community is what people are looking for 2. people really do not know how to go about it anymore because we’ve spent a few generations segmenting our lives to our own personal bubbles. So when it comes to images of church, do we actually know how to build community? We might not..

So here’s some added thoughts to this list of actions for those who would be called ‘people of the church.’

  1.  Take interest in other people’s passions as much as you want them to be interested in yours. We all have ideas for how life should be. The thing is that, unless we are unsurpassed geniuses, we only see a small part of the picture. Asking others what they see can only enhance understanding. [Tough one, stop concerning yourself first and get on with someone else and the things that are important to them. We probably do this very well for a children, but when it comes to our neighbor?..]
  2. Become a mentor to others less involved in their community. In every community there is a small, overworked group of leaders who try to figure out everything for everyone. They go to all the meetings and take on huge loads of work while others are silent—until it is time for them to complain. This will not do. If you are such a leader, mentor someone with less experience. If you are not, approach someone and ask them to mentor you. [I have many gifts and skills that could be shared. Beyond my youth work, which I do this often, do I do that in avenues for people in my neighborhood? No, and that is not something I’m proud of. Could do better to share skill sets to others in my community and who knows the impact that could be.]
  3. Support a cause with no direct personal benefit. We are involved with things we care about the most. That’s natural. My experience tells me, however, that the most interesting and possibly most important discoveries happen in the spaces between interests and disciplines and ideologies. Step outside your natural zone—it’s necessary for uncovering new solutions. [Giving of self with out some “return on investment” is tough cultural impulse to break from. We go to church because we ‘get something’ be it uplifting feeling from worship, friendships, networking, etc. Love doesn’t expect or need a return.]
  4. Invite “them” to your meeting. It is convenient to show our importance by pitting “us” against “them.” But “they” may have insights that will help us better understand the problem and appreciate the marvelous tensions that form a healthy community. [With the diverse & numerous platforms of niche news and neighborhoods we have made it easier to only focus on & affirm our current viewpoints. If you are conservative church type what would it be to go to the liberal group meetings on/about the church? Is it scary to think you will find out they are real people like you?]
  5. Reject the tendency to blame. Everyone plays a role in the problem and everyone must participate in the solution. Practice compassion towards those who, like ourselves, unwittingly contribute to the problem they wish to solve. [We play victim many times. Accountability is hard to come by so much that it is treated in very conflicting manners when it happens. Poverty is an issue and instead of blaming some group or a system, what would happen if we all assumed responsibility for doing our part of the solutions.]
  6. Confront internal contradictions. Claiming that the problem is someone else’s doing conveniently absolves us from doing our part. If I drive my car to a transportation meeting and complain about traffic jams, it’s necessary that I acknowledge my contribution to that traffic. At the very least, acknowledge the irony of the situation. [Chances are we do not even realize the many depths to which we play a part in the problem]
  7. Practice industrial-strength listening. Do not react until you’ve received. [Holy Listening or Spiritual Direction should be part of every Christian’s practice]
  8. Render unto community… Shrink your home to what is necessary and conduct the rest of your life in the community. For example, resist a “theater” room and visit your local theater instead. Anytime you bump into others you make your community a bit stronger. [How big is your church that it becomes so much the focus of your ministry that you have no energy to do anything outside in the community?]
  9. Clarify your image of the future. I find that most decisions we make are shaped by impulses so deeply ingrained we fail to be aware of them. Unexamined impulse is prejudice. Examined impulse, once confirmed, is guidance that leads to something better. Examine your embedded assumptions, embrace the relevant ones, and discard the rest. What remains is a clear intuition, an image of a possible future. Then engage with others to make it a reality. [Know thy self. As Jesus asks, “Who do people say I am?” “Who do you say I am?”]
  10. Resist the temptation to choose between the ideal and the reality. Hold them both in your awareness. Learn to enjoy the creativity and humor this tension offers. It can be quite funny. [You can’t do everything otherwise you’ll get yourself in trouble, you can’t do nothing otherwise you are not living up to the calling of Jesus Christ.]

I went to listen to some songwriters perform a few weeks ago. In Nashville, events like these are easy to find. What I like most about these events is listening to the stories behind the songs. Usually, you’ll hear something like, “When I wrote this song with Joe and Tom…” or “As Jane and Wanda and I wrote this…” Go to enough of these and listen to enough of these stories and you’ll realize that no one writes songs alone. Look at the liner notes to any CD in your collection and you’ll see.

And, in Bill Gates’ recent piece for the BBC, he wrote:

Communication skills and the ability to work well with different types of people are very important too. A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity where you sit in an office with the door closed all day and write lots of code. This isn’t true at all. Software innovation, like almost every other kind of innovation, requires the ability to collaborate and share ideas with other people, and to sit down and talk with customers and get their feedback and understand their needs.

In other words, we’re not alone. We can’t be our best alone. We need community like we need air, shoes and wi-fi.

There’s a difference, however, between community and communitas. Community can simply mean some sort of loose grouping, without any kind of real connection. Our neighborhood, our city, or our classmates can be considered our community. But we can still not know anything about another person in this community.

What we need then, is communitas. This is a Latin word that describes a more intense type of community – one that usually undergoes some sort of bonding experience or rite of passage together. Fraternities and sororities are a shallow form of this, sharing a common initiation ritual. Guys who stormed the beach at Normandy and firefighters are a more intense version.

ReBranding the Faith.. for a President

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Mitt Romney as Mormon trying to convince Voters
Graphic from faithmouse.blogspot.com

I was born in the last days of a Nixon administration, remember nothing of a the Ford presidency, have some recollection of Carter administration and was totally into a Regan presidency (though I had no clue why except that my parents liked him). Wasn’t old enough to vote for George H. Bush, but since then I have payed attention and voted in every election since then.

Somewhere along the road of all this religion became important… almost, too important.. the only thing important

History tells me it was a big deal when Kennedy was elected president because he was Catholic. Growing up around catholics in NJ I was confused why that was a big deal. Catholics were generally good folks. They did their mass, drank a lot of beer at the carnival beer garden and their kids played on my soccer team with me. I call them my friends.

We are now seeing the mormon church starting to ‘re-brand’ itself in a light so that they are seen as regular folks with possible, underlying, hopes that Mitt Romney (or now Jon Huntsman). This shouldn’t come as a surprise, the news was out there back last fall with their ‘regular person’ ad campaign.

My thought is, why does a church need to do this?

I don’t really know any folks who are mormons as close friends. Have met many along my years, had some nice chats with the young men doing their missionary work. Even read some of the Book of Mormon. Thinking of buying the musical recordings (though I’m told that isn’t really from the mormon church). Mormon’s seem to be regular people. Just as nice as the catholics I grew up with. They probably wouldn’t be guzzling beer in the beer garden at the carnival but a few might.

They have some odd customs and beliefs.. John Smith found some golden books in his back yard that no one saw in Pennsylvannia which became a new testament. They can retro-actively re/baptize the dead so that they may go to heaven, even the person was Jewish upon dying. I suppose I could go on about this list. My catholic friends always had the same conversations, “So this Pope is like next best thing to God?” “Why do you have to pray to a saint to talk to God?” “You really believe you are drinking Christ’s blood? That’s gross.”

With all this weirdness I could say that these folks were still nice, normal people. Any many times I would call them my friends.

But somewhere along the way this religion stuff got too important…

Being a church worker and involved in church for the greater portion of my conscious life I would never say church isn’t important. But there is a point where the doctrine of our religion has become a mountain of judgment for those seeking to serve our greater good.

My observations come along as such.

  1. The church gave up its social influence by giving over the mandates of caring for the poor, vulnerable, and needy of our society to the government. Whether it is a medicine program, a social service, a education program, or relief effort. We, as a church, can safely say that we outsourced this mission of our church to the government. To which, we probably do not have the imagination to get it back. Though some are imagining it and implementing it.
  2. Thus, the government became the place where social issues of taking care of humanity were now hashed out. No longer were our houses of faith, where we would come together in worship & as a family of believers, the place to sort what God wanted for our community and our church to be about. Our brand became less about what we did and more about a history of our titles and names. The politics of our culture were not a place where we extended grace and love (as ideally done in the church) but more a place where we put together way to ‘win’ something.
  3. Our prevailing economy of consumption feeds into our mindset that IT IS, all about me. My thoughts and needs are primary (more than just Mazlows base of hierarchy of needs) and who gives what is really needed and what is really achievable. We speak and act in an economy of consumption, why else would you have a “marketing campaign” to tell you that a group of people is ‘just like you.’ They want you, they need you, to digest and accept that message. We should just know that mormons, in most cases there are always crazies in every faith expression, are just like you and me.

So, fueled with an economy, and generation, of ‘me first’ and having given over the mission of the church to the government in more ways than we care to admit. We make a wrong assumption that someones religious expression has a huge effect on the running of the government.

Or…

Those of us who know the mormon church know that they actual have held onto their mission as a church and not outsourced it to the government (at least not as much as the rest of our faith community). They have their own health care system to take care of its members. They do their own disaster relief programs. They have their own parenting and child education systems within their faith traditions. They expect a certain amount of sacrifice of time and energy towards these entities (their youth ministry programs are intensive and led by parents and other leaders, not outsourced to church staff). Sacrifice, that isn’t convenient isn’t part of our vocabulary in my protestant world. Giving into a greater good, or sharing the resources with a community gets called “socialism” but yet it is a part of the start of the church in Acts 2.