Missional Community Formation

Many of your know that I am part of The Transform Network's Leadership Team.  As we were in the early stages of development, I wrote a short paper on missional community formation trying to reframe the conversation.  Much of it has been a long dialog I have had with many who participate in the Emerging church dialog.  I am grateful for the work of Phyllis Tickle who opened this up for me.

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Missional Community Formation Network – A New Framing Story

Summary: There is little doubt that the church is experiencing a dramatic and well-documented shift over the last fifty or more years.  With the advent of science and technology, the world is rapidly changing.  Denominations are in overall decline and church attendance for those under 35 is significantly waning.  Yet what if this process is opening us up to the possibility of a larger framing story, one that requires a new way of thinking about how we organize and engage God’s mission of restoration in community?

The Traditional Framing Story

In 2008, Phyllis Tickle released The Great Emergence. It documented the radical shifts that were occurring in the church over the last 100 years with the advent of science and technology.  It suggested that the fundamental assumptions of the church were being exposed, examined, and potentially re-organized.

Tickle offered a language for understanding and communicating how the church organized itself into four dominant frames or categories: liturgicals, social justice, renewalists, and conservatives.

Each category had a primary but not entirely exclusive framing story: Liturgicals around the framing story of liturgy; Social Justice Christians around social justice; Renewalists around gifts of the Spirit, and conservatives around The Word.

Each category gathered together under its own building, and church authority, belief sets, and rules flowed out of the organizing body.  Unity was based primarily on a specific interpretation of doctrine or beliefs, or practices within the category.  Within each of the four quadrants were smaller organizing bodies around subsets of these principles.

• Social Justice Christians: (Traditionally mainline Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Lutheran denominations)
• Conservatives: Evangelical denominations
• Renewalists: (Charismatic and Pentecostal denominations)
• Liturgicals: (Roman Catholics and Anglicans denominations)

Embedded within the four categories was the idea that our identity was found inside the category.  Historically, crossing boundaries was typically frowned upon from within the category.  The lines between each were often considered hard and fast, especially within more traditional circles.

The inherent problem of the four categories is that they reveal the historical nature of how we deal with conflict of opinion through schism and disunity. The unfortunate legacy of both the Great Schism and the Reformation was permission to divide.  Each claimed to be the “correct” form of belief and practice.

But the very presence of four categories revealed a problem.  How can four categories claim to be right if they believe and practice something different? Finding a basis then for unity amidst diversity becomes deeply important to the health of the church at large.

The Great Emergence

Tickle also documented the idea of The Great Emergence, a process that occurs every 500 years that fundamentally shakes up the church. Tickle suggested a series of historical events began to expose many of the deeply held assumptions of each framing story.  Individuals began to re-examine and listen to not just their own assumptions, beliefs and
practices but also those of the other categories as well.

Tickle described this exploration process as, “the cruciform.”

Some of those within each category begin to explore the practices and ideas of other framing stories.  For example, Conservatives began to explore the world of leading of the Spirit.  Renewalists began to explore the world of liturgy. Liturgicals began to explore the world of social justice, etc.  The traditional barriers were beginning to fade
and virtually nothing was off limits.

Brian McLaren explored this tenuous process in his several of his works.  In A New Kind Of Christian trilogy. He offered the fictional narrative journey of what it meant to face a spiritual crisis by questioning one’s faith background, and even deconstruct it for the sake of one’s own faith.  What emerged was a more robust faith that revealed the underlying grace in the question process.

In A Generous Orthodoxy, McLaren made the radical claim of that he could comfortably live and flourish in every category at the same time, which questioned the hard and fast but unwritten boundaries of each category.  His conclusion was that each framing story had something to learn from each other.

Tickle called this exploration process, “the Rose”.  The center became gathering point for those re-examining their faith.

Tickle described this unique occurrence in history by stating, “the old, natal divisions were beginning to melt away, especially where their four corners met.” Tickle further defined the process inside each category.  The closer to the center the more likely the person was to shift towards a hyphenated approach. Individuals were beginning to find
their faith expressions in multiple framing stories.

This exploration, deconstruction, and subsequent reconstruction process revealed the freedom to discover own one’s faith and to take responsibility for it.  To “emerge” was to take the risk to live in the tension of the question and seek out answers.

But the process also put it in conflict with one’s own original authority structures.  At the heart of the Emergence process was the underlining question, “Where is now our authority?”  To wander into other framing stories was to suggest that something was incomplete with the old one.  It revealed the tension that categories were
fundamentally based on limited and often changing human interpretation.

This emergence process suggested the need for larger framing story, one that was inclusive of the rich history and expressions of each category but was anchored in something more robust than the limited human interpretation of right belief or practice.  What was needed was a framing story that was conscious of the origins of faith and provided
a deeper basis for unity.

The Larger Framing Story: The kingdom of God

What if the narrative of Scripture provides the answer to the larger framing story?  It would be fundamentally sound and thoroughly robust.  It would allow for different expressions and at the same time call us back to unity.  And finally, it would be deeply rooted in God’s mission of restoration and call us to participate.

For Jesus, the larger framing story was the Kingdom of God.  Using Tickle’s original concept, the larger framing story is already embedded in the diagram.  It just needs to be drawn out.

Jesus understood the larger framing story.  He framed the overall conversation not around individual or even corporate expressions of church but around kingdom.

"Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." (Matthew 6:33)

The word church appears only 2 times in the Gospels, but the word kingdom appears 116 times.  Jesus offered the rather stark possibility that when we focused on Kingdom, we got everything else.  If we focused on Kingdom, Jesus could build his church.

“And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.” (Matthew 16:18)

What if Jesus understood that church was not possible without the larger framing story of Kingdom? What if He understood that one required the other?  Historically what has drawn people together is the deep reflection of God in our midst.  That’s Kingdom and the larger framing story that is needed.  When we begin with our individual expressions, we can easily miss the larger story.  But when we begin with the larger story, it is inclusive of our individual expressions.

Kingdom allowed the original framing stories to becomes exactly what they were always intended to be: God’s different, resonating expressions in the larger framing story.  One wasn’t better than the other. The contrast didn’t make one right and the other wrong.  Each was like a different facet of the diamond.

Jesus: The Original Authority

Kingdom answered one of the central questions of Emergence by placing Jesus as the central authority for everything.  This authority was consistently contrasted with those who thought their interpretation was correct.

“The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law.” (Mark 1:22)

By placing Jesus as the authority, we re-centered back on fundamental truth. It assumed that He was the answer to the questions.

“Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’” (John 14:6)

This realignment invited each person to go directly to Jesus and to seek out answers.  It invited them to participate in their own restoration process.  It also gave them responsibility for their faith.

The Cross: A Basis For Unity

Within this larger story is still the tension for the basis of unity.  How could each category discover the permission to cross traditional lines and see the bigger picture?  Once again, we return to Tickle’s concept to illustrate the answer.

The dividing lines reveal the cross.  And it is through the cross that we see the humanity of each category.  Before we ever believed, said, or practiced anything, we were originally human beings created in the image of God.  We literally see in the “other” what God sees: Jesus.  Restoring that image becomes the central mission of the Gospel.

The cross was not something we earned or made true by our belief.  It was something aligned ourselves with so we could see what was already true. The cross reminded us that as broken eikons we could sometimes get it wrong.   History would reveal that we often got it wrong and would even stubbornly change our minds over time. It reminded us to hold our individual understanding of truth with humility. The cross revealed that the central operating structure of the larger framing story was grace. The Apostle Paul conveyed this over and over again in many of his letters.

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)

No matter how far we traveled and explored within each category, we were covered by grace.  No matter how much we questioned, deconstructed, reconstructed or tried new things, we were under grace.  Nothing could change that. Grace allowed us to live into the tension of taking responsibility for our faith and growing.  It allowed us to fail as much as we succeeded.  Grace revealed that nothing could separate us from the love of God. Grace revealed that our faith was not in our own interpretations of what is right but that Jesus would be right for us.  It allowed our belief to shift and change, grow and blossom in ways we had never experienced before.  No longer was it a question of in or out but growing or not growing.

A Missional Approach

Kingdom freed us up to ask not, “what are we doing”, but “what is God doing?”  The larger framing story released us to engage God’s mission and to partner with Jesus in the renewal of all things.

“The Spirit of the lord God is upon me.  For he has anointed me to bring the good news to the afflicted.  He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim a year of favor from the Lord.” (Luke 4:18-19)

Jesus understood that humanity was captivated.  His mission was to release people from that captivity, to bring restoration and freedom, to reveal vision and favor.

He also clarified everything by simplifying orthodoxy and orthopraxy down to one truth: love.

29"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' 31The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these." (Mark 12:29-31)

In the act of love we were revealing the Kingdom of God in our midst.  We were becoming Jesus to the world around us.  In love we were participating with God in the restoration of all things.  In love we were revealing that truth had revealed itself in our own lives.

A Vision For A New Network

This larger framing story suggests, and even demands the need for a new way of thinking and organizing.  It leads us to ask some very important questions.  What would it look like to gather together under the larger framing story of the Kingdom?  What would it look like to participate with Jesus in God’s mission of restoration for all
creation?  What would it look like to create and support missional
communities that begin with participation in God’s Kingdom mission?

We believe the time is now to create something fresh and new, a missional community formation network.  The network would gather together those individuals, leaders and organizations already participating in the larger framing story.  It would also seek out those looking to participate in the Kingdom. It would develop missional
communities of practice much like the current church planting
networks.  It would also foster training and development in missional
practices and activities.

It would create a basis for unity founded on grace, and centered on the authority of Jesus.  It would advance robust theological conversations across the traditional borders. It would include opportunities for each expression to continue to flourish, knowing that God works in different ways for different people.

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I'm very interested in your thoughts.