TheyCallMePastorBryan

February 06, 2012

Apparently I’m into taking pictures with my cell phone lately. This is a shot of one of the walls of my office building. For whatever reason I find painted over graffiti to be quite intriguing.

February 03, 2012

This is the mural at the parking lot Sacred Roots has been working on as part of the Our Happy Block project.

on insistence of pastoral authority

So it seems everything I hear this month about church leadership has been centered on asserting power and authority and how “questioning authority is sinning.” And all I can come to is that there are a large number of people who are obsessing over power in relation to leadership in the church. I’ve been holding out on writing because I just have not been able to bring up the energy to deal with it. But the more BS that comes out about bad use of pastoral authority and insistence on defining Christianity in masculine terms, the more I’m convinced that I have to say something.

Yet the truth is I’m tired of dealing with this, so I’m just going to tell a couple stories from the Bible and leave it at that.

In the Gospel of Matthew, there’s a time where John the Baptist is in prison and he’s starting to have doubts about whether Jesus is really the messiah, so John sends some of his followers to ask Jesus if John’s belief was wrong. Jesus sends these followers back and essentially says “You tell him about what’s happening here and he can decide for himself.” And then as he’s talking with those around him and reflecting on John’s imprisonment, Jesus says “From the days of John the Baptist until now the Kingdom of heaven has suffered violence and violent men lay hold of it.” In other words, the way of this Kingdom is such that there are those that will seek to control this movement by force, whether through imprisoning John the Baptist or through seeking to trap Jesus and get him in trouble with the political authorities.

We read this passage in Sacred Roots a few weeks ago and I was struck by how this idea continues to be true to Christianity. There are always those that try to control the Kingdom by force and by doing so do great violence to the Kingdom. Many times those of us who have been called into leadership have great doubts about our callings, and one of the easiest ways for us to allay that is to insist on a kind of authoritarian rule, a way in which we get to be little popes and if people threaten that we want to threaten to break their noses or other such nonsense.

What I’ve noted is that many times in our attempts to bear witness to and live in the Kingdom, we end up objectifying others and using them to work out our own issues, be that pounding somebody with some truth we are certain of because we’re struggling with doubt, asserting authority because we are unsure about our calling or feeling unloved. But the thing is, when we don’t deal with our interior lives we bear our crap out on others. As I’ve summed it up with my friends, “If you don’t deal with your shit, you will inevitably do violence to the Kingdom.” It’s not that we go out and intend to do it, but when we don’t deal with our interior lives it just tends to happen, we use other people to deal with our issues. Jesus points this out brilliantly when he speaks of correcting the speck in the others eye while ignoring the log in our own. We often think we can justify ourselves by fixing our problems in others.

Now this reminds me of the other story in Matthew which I keep being reminded of in the midst of what I see as some really bad misuse of pastoral authority. The mother of two of Jesus’ disciples comes to Jesus and asks that when he establishes his Kingdom that he make these two boys his left hand and right hand men. Jesus tells her and them that they don’t know what they’re asking for, for leadership in the Kingdom is not an issue of power but of constantly putting yourself out to get punched in the face. And then Jesus says what I believe ought to be at the center of any belief in church leadership we ever consider: “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant and whoever wants to be first must be your slave - just as the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Lost in the midst of a lot of this crap about pastoral authority and making Jesus out to be the most manly dude you’ve ever seen with calloused hands and some burly scars from woodworking accidents is the fact that his way of leadership looks drastically different from stating that questioning decisions is sinning and that he ought to break people’s noses for doing so. There is no insistence of you must submit but rather an insistence that the leader must serve. That is the paradox of pastoral authority, it is not gained by creating hierarchical structures and insisting on authority because of your position. No rather it is given through loving and serving. And this is the problem with the whole paradigm that people just need to submit to their pastoral leadership. When people know they are loved, they will recognize authority. When you walk in the Spirit instead of an insistence on lording over people and asserting authority, there will of course be moments where people will refuse to submit to pastoral advice. But that’s how the Kingdom has always been, willing to allow people to walk away, recognizing that lording over people never in the end produces what we want.

And that’s what I’d love to see, more serving and loving and less insistence on pastoral or positional authority and demanding of people to submit because in the end to me it sounds much more like Gentile leadership than Kingdom leadership.

February 02, 2012

My Portlandia post of the day. This is the sign for my office space on Foster Powell. We have definitely put a bird on it.

February 01, 2012

I saw this on J.R. Briggs’ blog and just needed to share it. It’s definitely true to my experience of a spiritual journey.

January 30, 2012

Needed to listen to this today.

January 24, 2012

Sacrilege #SpeakeasySacrilege

I received a copy of Hugh Halter’s Sacrilege through Speakeasy On Tap. My only real interaction with Hugh has been hearing him speak once and talking with others about the Tangible Kingdom.

Sacrilege was a pleasantly surprising book, one which breathed a lot of life into me as I heard a lot of similarities between Hugh’s experience and what we’re trying to do with Sacred Roots. Sacrilege is a book that identifies sacred cows, puts them on an alter and slaughters them for all to see.

It’s a book that helps us reconnect with all the little ways Jesus rubbed religious folks the wrong way by connecting with those outside, and being quite sacreligious in terms of some of the things he did.

Honestly, that’s about all the review I can give this. It’s good. I could probably nitpick a couple things, but I’m not going to, because overall this is the kind of book that a number of us need to read and be reintroduced to living the way of Jesus, who was mocked by the Pharisees for being a friend of sinners. At some point it will probably make you feel a little uncomfortable, but it’s an uncomfort worth pushing through. Go read it now!

Well, I’m back from vacation. Guess I didn’t follow through on doing those blogs. But they’re coming, oh yes, they’re coming.

More to come, but know, vacation was great and I’m ready to hit the ground running again. Blogs soon!

January 17, 2012

Vacation

Being on vacation is nice. It’s been great already to have some time to just breathe and enjoy the sun and read and hang out with friends. I have a sense that this may be just what the doctor ordered for me. Anyway there’s a little update on what’s going on with me. There may be a few blogs on the way too!

January 13, 2012

Missional in Suburbia

Tomorrow I’m teaching a day of a Missional Church class the my friend Rob does at Whitworth University. In the past I’ve found that a lot of folks in class struggle with seeing what being missional looks like in urban settings but have a much harder time getting it for suburban and rural areas. I asked my friend Matt Bowen to share a bit about his experience of being at a larger established church in Beaverton as it has experienced transition towards being more missional in its alignment, and thought I’d share it here as well.

Has the church in suburbia any chance at success in missional engagement? I recently met a church planter in my city who works in an urban context. When I disclosed the fact that I am a pastor in one of our city’s suburban areas, he became noticeably uninterested in our conversation. I concluded that mission in suburbia didn’t make the cut for this planter when it comes to worthwhile conversations.

My sense is that both the great commission and Jesus’ sending statement in Acts 1:8 leave no room for turf wars when it comes to the necessity and urgency of the missio Dei in all contexts.

However, I understand the church planter’s dismissal as well. Aren’t larger suburban churches known for high program overhead, internal focus, and large staffing budgets? Are they not the progenitors of Christian subculture rather than missional counter- culture? These are important questions, not to be avoided.

However, as with all mission activity, the validity of the endeavor is not rooted in the opinions of others or the historical baggage associated, but in the call of God and the movement of the Spirit of God. Here are a few ways that we are paying attention to and attempting to live in harmony with the Holy Spirit’s movement of the church into suburban mission:

Community: Our best expressions of mission have been the smaller communities in our church that believe they are called to share life together. The hospitality they demonstrate to neighbors and friends and the love they have for one another bears fruit for mission, even in the ‘burbs. We believe that even though people close their garage doors the moment they drive home, they have an innate longing to belong. Thus our groups are a powerful expression for mission when they take their call seriously. The more “successful” expressions of community have intentionally cultivated a presence in both public/social space among neighbors and place a high value on relationships. One group began a community garden that mostly hosts un-churched neighbors. Another group has embedded in a network of jazz musicians and offers a space each week to jam. Another group is making inroads into parents of teens by getting involved in the public schools and offering a place to be with other parents wrestling through similar issues. They key in each group seems to be a place to be oneself among others who accept and care in a context that is typically indifferent.

Service: A church that serves its neighborhood without asking for anything back makes a dent. Recently we began a ministry that offers a free meal every week. It is offered in our building because we have the facilities to prepare a lot of food and host a lot of people. The reality of the suburbs is often very different beneath the surface than the way it appears above. Many people are hurting financially even thought they live in an area of town that appears comfortable and affluent. While people can receive a meal once a week, the real hope is that they will meet a loving family of faith that will journey alongside them. Another way our church is able to serve is through a food pantry that offers help to those in need. While these modes of service offer relief, some of the best service is the long term commitments we have with local schools or organizations that have primary expertise in transitioning people into stability and health. Much could be said about the resources available in suburban church contexts to serve the world. We seem to have an ever increasing population of people who are getting creative about serving their contexts and bringing others along in their mission.

Children: One of the elements often overlooked in much of the missional conversation is what to do with children. Many organic forms of mission might not always have some of the safety elements that the typical suburban parent would expect when considering the needs of their children. One way that we have found solid missional engagement is to serve families by providing space for kids that is protected and free. We have provided date nights for free and summer camps that many parents in the neighborhood take advantage of. Often times the gospel finds its road into the family through the kids.

In many ways our church is transitioning from a predominantly Christendom-era church to a more fully missional ecclesiology. Since it is a large suburban church we are experimenting all the time while moving the people we have into new forms of community and new contexts of service. We are frequently finding that many are already engaged and merely needing encouragement and validation that their lives are missional in orientation. It is important to keep mission at the forefront of our ecclesial imagination through teaching, telling stories and celebrating people who take risks. The more people catch a vision of the kingdom the more excited and inventive they become in living out mission in suburbia.