Missional Explorer

Middle Age Doldrums

I haven't been blogging much in recent days due, in part, to the busy-ness of my summertime schedule which has included travel (Canada), painting (with Coach Dave), the mountains of Colorado (Buena Vista), and prepping for school in the fall.  But the major reason is that, quite honestly, I just feel pretty tapped out in many ways.  The only reading I've enjoyed in recent days is pure pleasure reading. . . the last two Harry Potter books which I blitzed through after my sons recommended them so highly. Everything else feels like a re-hash of what I've already explored.  And I am lacking the passion to prove the previous sentence untrue.  I have tweaked my two classes at school with some new missional resources which I will comment on later but I have no idea if they will take with my kids at school.  We'll see.  I am very eager to unpack the new Missio Dei curriculum which my contact at ACSI just emailed is set to be released in the next week or so.  This is the curriculum which I helped research in 2006-2007.  So that will be a nice kick in the pants when I see that next week.  But otherwise, I'm feeling just a sense of malaise probably due to a number of life situations.  If I had to title this "chapter" in my life, I would probably call it "The Middle Age Doldrums".

In the midst of it all, I am facing some relationship challenges with friends and family.  I gotta say that sometimes life just sucks. . . there is no other way to put it. . . when one feels trapped in choices that feel profoundly lose-lose in the results.  In light of the above, the one question which has been posed to me in recent days which I have found somewhat challenging is a self-reflective question tracing who I am today back to the basic messages I internalized as fact from my family-of-origin.  This was not posed as a question of "blame" so much as a question of "what kinds of information about myself and the world around us did I accept as fact from my earliest days which may not be fact at all" but are still governing my feelings and responses?  This is a meditative question which I am somewhat curious to explore. 

My initial take on this ponder is a phrase I've blogged on before: "If it's to be, it's up to me", a significant lie which I have nevertheless lived as a default philosophy of life for many years.  In other words, if I don't continually stare this one down, I live it out without even knowing it.  No matter that this obviously denies any sense of God's presence, direction, and inspiration in my life, I have still lived this without question or distraction.  Beyond this message which I internalized for whatever reasons, I am not quite sure what other messages I have lived.  But it may be helpful and fun to explore this in the days ahead.  Who knows. . . maybe getting to the bottom of this question may help lift the sense of doldrums that presently describes my story.

Where Kids Are Still Strugging

While I have been so incredibly impressed with this past year's class as demonstrated in my previous post, there are still four significant "markers" to which I must return next year before plunging more deeply into Joining God's Mission.  My theory is that these "markers" are all related to the pervasive influence of Christendom which has so completely dominated the landscape that the vast majority of kids (and adults) do not even realize the blindness we have embraced.  

The first marker continues to be God's Story which has suffered unparalleled damage from mis-reading the Bible as a dis-integrated collection of children's stories, each with it's own moral at the end seemingly wrapping each story up with a "happy ending"  without realizing that, in so doing, we have distorted God's Story beyond all recognition.  Reading the Bible with the right contextual lens tells a Story that is neither child-friendly nor spiritually harmless.

The other three markers are directly related to the first as kids (and adults) are strugging with God's Mission in the world, the nature and purpose of His "kingdom", and not surprisingly, the "missions-to-missional" paradigm shift which is continuing to rock our worlds.  I am not sure how I will help kids deconstruct the above but we must re-address these issues before we go much further down the road.

Looking Back and Ahead

We have now completed my second and, by far, most enjoyable Joining God''s Mission class at Jim Elliot School.  The class was so successful with student "buy in" (spiritually, intellectually, and experiencially) that I have decided to help the class drink more deeply from the missional well next semester.   The trick is what and how do we proceed?  My initial title for the Senior Seminar class is "Faith, Culture, and Mission After High School" which is sufficiently broad enough to integrate all three areas into this full year class.  First quarter I plan to use the new Tangible Kingdom Primer by High Halter and Matt Smay which is highly user-and-experiential-friendly which I have found is especially important for high school students.  Second quarter I want to drink more deeply from culture and mission including the whole "believing, belonging, and behaving" model which is transforming so much of our cultural engagement.  

I haven't blogged much recently because I have been so caught up in the missional process of Joining God's Mission with students at JECS but I did want to document this recent most enjoyable success. . . which is really only the tip of the iceberg of Joining God's Mission beyond high school.   

Christian Troublemakers?

Ryan Taylor, a friend and companion on the missional trail just posted an awesome quote on his Facebook site: "Christians should be troublemakers, creators of uncertainty, agents of a dimension incompatible with society." -Jacques Ellul.  I wish we could live this out more often as we are all called to be counter-cultural subversives bearing witness to a radicalized Kingdom in whatever culture we are placed. 

Out of the Desert

I have been living in a very dry time period with regard to reading as nothing in recent months has truly captured my fancy.  That is until I began N.T. Wright's book Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church.  I am only about 80 pages into the book and I already find myself interacting with Wright on almost every page. . . in some cases with huge "ah-hahs" of new discoveries and delights.  I'll blog about a few of them over the next few postings but, among all the new wonders, is that I have finally found someone who takes on the question of "death: friend or foe" head on!  I have pondered the issue of death for years including talking with older friends who may be close to this experience.  Answers to the question of death range all over the map loosely characterized on comfort end by "death is my friend and is easy to embrace. . . it is just crossing over from one life to another" to the very opposite opinion that "death is my mortal enemy. . . one to to fought to the bitter end".  So which is it?   There is no question that death was not part of God's original plan but what are we to make of it now?  Is death a friend to be embraced or a foe to be fought?

Of so many things I like about Wright's book, Wright take on death is not mushy embrace but also not a fearful defeatism.  Wright insists that death is, in fact, our enemy but is a beaten enemy who is not to be feared after Jesus showed our future by His Resurrection into a newly transformed body that is, at once, physical yet also physical in a way completely unlike our own.  Now that is something I can buy into with enthusiasm!  Just as Dallas Willard puzzled me for over a year with his stray comment (in person) that "the Cross of Jesus is the Achilles heel of evangelical theology" so to have I struggled with the reality of death, friend or foe.  And I haven't even begun to unpack the depth of Wright's work.

Ahh, it feels good to be reading something that captures my imagination again after a long dry spell.

Highs & Lows

Midway through this year's Joining God's Mission class, I would say the "highs" have been helping kids (1) see that God's Story asthey have known/experienced it is incredibly lame (2) struggle with the "Kingdom" of God (3) see that salvation is not primarily about heaven but about life in the here and now (4) understand the huge connection between culture and mission, culture and God's Story, culture and . . . well, everything!  Like most kids in my experience, my present class has been captured by issues of culture and I am eager to take it as far as I can go.

The "lows" of class this year have been the continuing drama surrounding (1) tests as a measure of learning (2) lack of "buy in" on the part of some students which is reflected by poor attendance and/or work habits outside ofclass (3) an occasional unwillingnesss to think/reflect deeply about God beyond Sunday School answers and church dogma and (4) outright resistance by a few who feel (sometimes like their parents) that my out-of-the-box wonderings and wanderings, asking questions and encouraging (not cultivating) honest doubt to be expressed is too faith-risky and perhaps even heretical. 

At least this year, most of the kids care.  If you search back to last year's class in the confines of this blog, you will find that most kids from last year didn't honestly care about God so why in the world (literally) would they care about God's mission?  A fact that I didn't realize until late in the game.  This year has been refreshingly different in that regard which re-energizes me daily.

Networking Our Missional Exploration

As our kids hit the streets in their various third places, I am also pondering the use of networking technology which has become second nature to kids which may include the powerhouse community organizer of Facebook.  My idea over spring break has been to find a virtual classroom where I can interact with kids re: their Mission Explorations outside of the confines of an actual classroom.  To that end, I am developing a Facebook site for our class to be populated by class participants and. . . who knows else.  On one hand I am tempted to lock the site down to class members only for security reasons.  But, on the other hand, I am wondering if a locked-down site would defeat the very purpose of our Missional Exploration which is to engage our culture and the people that God brings our way. 

I think that most of the class is already on Facebook.  (I have had a Facebook account since last fall and while I do not allow current students on my site for various reasons, I have found Facebook to be a communication medium of gigantic proportions.  In fact, I opened a Facebook account when one of our graduates was tragically killed in a car accident last fall and we had graduates streaming back to school within an hour, hearing the news through cell phones and Facebook.)  Yet I know that some parents (including ironically me) have not allowed their kids onto this virtual playing field due to the dangers that often lurk in cyberspace.  Even so, I would like to try this thereby bending the Internet to more interesting directions.  And if parents do not want their kids on Facebook, I have created second and third options for interaction through a online blog and/or personal journal as they choose.  Yet another new experiment this year in Joining God's Mission.

From Thought Experiment to Lived Experience

Half-way through our class in Joining God's Mission, we are now making a transition from what Leonard Sweet calls a "thought experiment" (exploring mission from a Biblical and Cultural context) to an actual "lived experience" as the kids will be choosing a third place to engage in Missional Exploration.  Ethnologist Ray Oldenburg posed the concept of a third place which, together with home (our first place) and work/school (our second place) define and shape so much of who we are.  A third place is where we experience community by serendipity and/or intent.   It is Oldenburg's contention that we all yearn for the sense of conversation and community that have been lost with the demise of neighborhoods, front porches, block parties, etc.  Replacing these in our present culture are incidental places where community happens be they coffee shops, YMCA's, diners, or bookstores.   Third places are made for God encounters and conversations.  And, as Missional Explorations, I want my kids in class to identify and begin to study/hang out/look for God in one specific location.  

My guess is that some kids will take this on with relish, others will find this experience way outside their comfort zone while still others will probably think I'm crazy and will be bored to tears.  Yet aftertalking about God's mission in the world for the past 10 weeks, I want our kids to begin to look for and engage God's mission in what, at first glance, may appear to be the mundane of everyday life.   Needless to say I will be very interested in what my kids encounter as they look for God in their chosen third place.   As with so many others, kids often have no idea of how/where to listen and look for God.  In fact, this is the issue which vexes so many kids these days:their experience of God has been essentially confined to a mind game devised (and compartmentalized) as "church" so they generally have no idea how to listen for God let alone see His fingerprints at work. 

The Stunning Thing that Kids Don't Get

I asked a very straightforward question for a third time on a test this past week.  It is a question which we have discussed multiple times in class and which I have asked on two previous occasions.  Yet, after three tests and multiple conversations, my juniors just can't seem to get it.  Here is the question:

In Jesus we find the ultimate game-changer in God's Story with the self-announced arrival of what He called the "Kingdom" of God.  What did Jesus mean by the arrival of God's Kingdom and how/where can we see this "Kingdom" in our world today?

Rather than answering with any kind of meaning, passion, or purpose, my juniors continue to fall back onto (what they know and acknowledge are) tired church-lingo cliches which have absolutely no meaning for them but which continue to serve as almost "default" responses in lieu of internalizing a better Story.   When discussing this question, several students even denied that anything was "new" in Jesus or that Jesus was "unique"  in any way.  I can handle interpretive differences such as "This world is currently being run by who? (Satan or God, depending on one's worldview) or "Is everything that happens in this world God's Will ? (Yes or No, again depending on one's viewpoint).  What I can't handle is the colossally vague petrified responses that seem to rob Jesus of any purpose beyond "saving us from our sins".  If this is the best we can do in explaining God's Mission in the world, our next generation is in a heap of trouble . . which, of course, is already being played out in multiple surveys which demonstrate that kids intend to leave church/faith upon leaving home.   

Not that I really blame the kids.  The reality is that the fault is our's for consistently telling a Story that is not threatening, dangerous or compelling let alone worthy of devotion or the sacrifice of one's very life.  Kids have spent their entire (church) lives hearing a story (or worse, a disconnected series of stories) that is often on the level of children's fables with a ridiculously simplistic moral at the end.  With a lifetime of hearing only these stories to draw on, is it any wonder that kids don't get Jesus in any depth or detail.  Or worse yet, turn away from Jesus because they think they've heard/experienced it all when, in fact, they haven't even begun to live the Real Deal.

So I am discouraged at present with how to proceed.  How can I help kids "get" God's Mission in the world when they can't even "get" the One who is calling us there?      

One Year Better

I haven't blogged much in recent days in part because I've been spending so much time revising my junior class "Joining God's MIssion".  Now almost half way through this semester class, I can safely say that it is a much better class in both process and outcome.  Last year I was unknowingly struggling with kids who really  didn't care about God. . . so why would they care about joining His Mission in the world?  This year I spent much more time early unpacking God's Story along with why so many kids find this Story so unattractive.  This level of honesty I think helped provoke/draw kids into taking another look at God's Mission beyond the cliches and church propaganda.  With God's Story as a context, we then unpacked the importance of "culture" in Joining God's Mission.  Culture is almost always an awesome invitation for kids here in the States in part (I think) because Americans have rarely traveled abroad to engage different cultures.

With God's Story & culture as a context, we will now turn to Joining God's MIssion in our own culture.  Using an Australian curriculum called "Ignition", I want to now turn kids loose into our world find, observe, and participate in God's presence in the world.  They are already keeping a scrapbook on where they see God's fingerprints in the news.  Now the opportunity to see God what we often think is the mundane of everyday life where we (often without knowing it) rarely look for God.  More on this later.