Fort Worth Dish Out
A little project I have had the honor of working on is the Fort Worth Dish Out. Which is not a huge thing in the world of micro-finance and micro-granting, but it is a huge thing in my little world.
Not one. In fact, the opposite was true. People asked when could we do it again and even offered up their time and resources to help the FwDo in the future. It really was remarkable.
If you were not there, we had 162 people in attendance on a Sunday evening who each gave at least $20 to break bread, meet new people, share ideas, and participated by voting to support different mission/service projects/ministries in the Fort Worth community.
People were there for 2 hours. Which by most accounts, is 100% longer than most worship services.
And not a single person said to me, "hey, this thing ran long".
But more than that. It was Church.
Too often we think of Church as what we do in worship. And while worship is important to Church, worship is just one expression of Church.
And the worship expression has become the dominate, and seemingly only acceptable expression, of Church.
Recently I was asked by a respected clergy friend if there was any fall out from church members or from my bishop about putting on an expression of Church that had wine. (The UMC has a stance that does not jibe with alcohol consumption.)
Frankly, while I respect my bishop and will do as I am asked to do I would have to respectfully disagree with him if he decided to take issue with the FwDo. However, based upon a recent blog post he wrote, I do not think that will be a problem.
Here is the last paragraph of the linked post which I think expresses an incarnational theology beautifully (emphasis added):
"Wesley took the commanding mission (and commission!) to spread the gospel through making disciples way beyond radical hospitality. He went where the people were out of love of Christ and love of those who have no relationship with the living God as Father, Son, & Holy Spirit. What is the equivalent of the New Room and field preaching for us this day? I believe the same living Lord who called Wesley and early Methodists calls us today."
It seems to me that the UMC has at least one bishop who understands mission and service to a world in need and might be willing to support some ministries that move the Church into other expressions of Church that are not just worship.
I am thankful that there were many people at the FwDo who also caught a glimpse of what Church can look like in addition to Sunday morning worship.
Let us hope that vision does not fade in time.
Frankly, while I respect my bishop and will do as I am asked to do I would have to respectfully disagree with him if he decided to take issue with the FwDo. However, based upon a recent blog post he wrote, I do not think that will be a problem.
Here is the last paragraph of the linked post which I think expresses an incarnational theology beautifully (emphasis added):
It seems to me that the UMC has at least one bishop who understands mission and service to a world in need and might be willing to support some ministries that move the Church into other expressions of Church that are not just worship.
I am thankful that there were many people at the FwDo who also caught a glimpse of what Church can look like in addition to Sunday morning worship.
Let us hope that vision does not fade in time.
Community vs. Collaboration
Recently finishing a book entitled, A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change.
I recommend it if you are interested.
One little gem in this book speaks of communities an collectives. Here is the section I find interesting (emphasis added):
A collective is very different from an ordinary community. Whereas communities can be passive (though no all of them are by any means) collectives cannot. In communities, people learn in order to belong. In a collective, people belong in order to learn. Communities derive their strength from creating a sense of belonging, while collectives derive theirs from participation.
This little distinction seems to capture the tension between what I can best describe as modern and post-modern leadership in the Church. Bot a community and a collective have their place, but it seems to me that more and more of my peers and those younger than me (post-moderns) long for collectives.
We live in a Facebook time in which we have a sense of "belonging" (even if it is superficial at times). I have belonging, but I do not have collective.
Each small group that I have been a part of that contains a critical mass of post-moderns builds itself as a community. This is what they have been taught, this is what their parents and their grand parents set up small groups communities. They are groups of people who come together in order to belong to one another. So social activities take precedence over spiritual formation or missional outreach.
And each small group with a critical mass of post-moderns eventually folds under lack of interest.
Could it be that the models of creating community are no longer effective in creating and building a Church?
Could it be that the models of creating collectives are more effective?
Could it be why wikipedia is so popular? It is a collective in which people belong in order to learn. Could it be that Churches who expect people to learn how to belong are building communities which no longer meet the need or address the world?
Could it be that Churches could lead the way in collective building?
It seems to me that Jesus had a collective of 12 and was rejected by his community.
Maybe Jesus was onto something.
I recommend it if you are interested.
One little gem in this book speaks of communities an collectives. Here is the section I find interesting (emphasis added):
A collective is very different from an ordinary community. Whereas communities can be passive (though no all of them are by any means) collectives cannot. In communities, people learn in order to belong. In a collective, people belong in order to learn. Communities derive their strength from creating a sense of belonging, while collectives derive theirs from participation.
We live in a Facebook time in which we have a sense of "belonging" (even if it is superficial at times). I have belonging, but I do not have collective.
Each small group that I have been a part of that contains a critical mass of post-moderns builds itself as a community. This is what they have been taught, this is what their parents and their grand parents set up small groups communities. They are groups of people who come together in order to belong to one another. So social activities take precedence over spiritual formation or missional outreach.
Could it be that the models of creating community are no longer effective in creating and building a Church?
Could it be that the models of creating collectives are more effective?
Could it be why wikipedia is so popular? It is a collective in which people belong in order to learn. Could it be that Churches who expect people to learn how to belong are building communities which no longer meet the need or address the world?
Could it be that Churches could lead the way in collective building?
It seems to me that Jesus had a collective of 12 and was rejected by his community.
Maybe Jesus was onto something.
Free and Cheap
A couple of weeks ago my senior minister made a comment in her sermon about grace being free but not cheap. For those theology students out there, you may recall this is not a new idea and was popularized by Bonhoeffer.
It got me thinking some about the difference in free and cheap, which I open to the larger wiser community.
This is where I have been musing...
Cheap things are cheap on both sides of the relationship. Things are cheap to make and thus become cheap to sell. Something that is "cheaply made" is "cheaply sold" and has little value to both the producer and the consumer. Cheap costs little for both parties.
Free things, however, cost a great deal to the provider and cost nothing to the recipient. For instance, hospitality is free. It costs a great deal for those who are providing the meal, the place, the entertainment, the conversation, the drink and on and on. But it is free for those who receive this hospitality. Make no mistake, hospitality is not cheap - but it is free.
Likewise, in the church we are called to share all things free.
But make no mistake free is not cheap.
Perhaps this is why the Church is in decline? We have made what is free cheap and thus it costs little to everyone involved.
How can we as a Church reclaim the idea of a free that costs and discard the idea of cheap?
It got me thinking some about the difference in free and cheap, which I open to the larger wiser community.
This is where I have been musing...
Cheap things are cheap on both sides of the relationship. Things are cheap to make and thus become cheap to sell. Something that is "cheaply made" is "cheaply sold" and has little value to both the producer and the consumer. Cheap costs little for both parties.
Free things, however, cost a great deal to the provider and cost nothing to the recipient. For instance, hospitality is free. It costs a great deal for those who are providing the meal, the place, the entertainment, the conversation, the drink and on and on. But it is free for those who receive this hospitality. Make no mistake, hospitality is not cheap - but it is free.
Likewise, in the church we are called to share all things free.
But make no mistake free is not cheap.
Perhaps this is why the Church is in decline? We have made what is free cheap and thus it costs little to everyone involved.
How can we as a Church reclaim the idea of a free that costs and discard the idea of cheap?
Be the change by Jason Valendy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.