I must say, I agree with Scot’s assessment of the problem, if not his solution.  There’s an illness in evangelicalism, and it’s that everything is always worse than it used to be.  Teens are more pregnant, politicians are more corrupt, culture is less Christian, and, yes, the church is less relevant.  I think Scot’s right to point this out.  But what do you think of his suggestion that an Augustinian ecclesiology is the answer?

Everywhere I go and nearly everyone I read has a theme, whether central or peripheral, and I think the theme is getting too much attention and it’s getting too much play and it’s setting us up for failure.

Here’s the theme: the Church is so messed up.

Instances: preaching is not that good today; theology is so shallow today; Christian morals are so loose today; parents are not that good today; we’ve got too much individualism today; kids don’t respond as they used to; the church is spending too much money today; Christians aren’t liked in culture ….

The suggestion: Let’s start all over again. This time we’ll get it right. Let’s get ourselves a group of really zealous followers of Jesus and let’s think about kingdom and forget the choir robes and denominations and pastors and hierarchy and church budgets. Finally, we’ll get it right. We’ll just follow Jesus and we’ll forget the church. We’ll do kingdom work and forget the church.

Go ahead. Join the crowd. In a few years you’ll come back to something you either face now, in a more rational manner, or later in a more chastened manner, that is if you’ve got any passion left. Here’s my theory:

I want to say I believe in an Augustinian ecclesiology.

via Criticizing Church, Defending Church – Jesus Creed.

Well, it seems that my long-time friend and occasional sparring partner, Andrew Jones (TSK), has (once again) said we’ve reached the end of the emergent/-ing church movement.  TSK’s ambivalence for the “emergent/-ing” language and the partnership that some of us in the States have with publishing houses is well known.  And I think it’s always dangerous to start to declare something over as an historian when one is still up to one’s ankles in it.

To be fair, TSK clarifies in a comment on the post when he writes that in 2009 the ECM became,

less radical and non-offensive but actually larger in scope and impact than it has ever been.

Let’s take those in reverse order.

I used to think I knew what the term “radical” meant, but then I entered a doctoral program in theology.  How that term is used in the academy versus how it’s used in the streets and in the church is virtually unrelated, as far as I can tell.  What I now mean by “radical” is informed by Marxism (another word that’s dirty outside the academy, but everyone in the academy seems to know what you mean when you use it).

Karl Marx (he looks as nice as a grandpa)

In short, what Marx did was to see what others did not see,

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind. (from The Communist Manifesto)

The capitalist system, he’s saying, is predicated on constant changes in production, which both wipes away all former fixedness of human existence and precludes the ability of the bourgeoisie or the masses to reflect on their existence because they are always too busy trying to keep up with said changes.  What is “radical” about Marx and Marxists is their ability to see and proclaim this, and to potentially catalyze a revolution that will overturn this way of being.  Of course, it’s somewhat ironic that now, 150 years after Marx, his ideas live on the academy but are virtually unknown in politics.

That being said, is the ECM still “radical”?  Has it ever been?  It seems to me that, yes, there is some radicality left in the ECM, for it seems to me that emergents are and have been among those proclaiming that the “emperor has no clothes” — here the “emperor” being the conventional church.  And, contrary to Aaron Stewart, who commented at TSK,

The Emergent conversation is coming to an end because people eventually get tired of just talking,

the fact is that those of us in the ECM have spent a lot more time doing than talking.  To push that even further, why that dichotomy?  When TSK travels Europe and talks to folks about starting new, off-the-grid Christian communities, is he “just talking”?  Am I, when I write a book or a blog post or give a talk somewhere?  Of course not.  Talking is actually doing, so let’s all stop using this tired trope, okay?

And secondly, is the ECM becoming “less offensive”?  Let me shake my Magic Eight Ball.  Mine reads, “Outlook not so good.” If my personal and anecdotal experience is any guide, the ECM is more offensive than ever.  In the States, the Evangelical Intelligentsia has determined that emergent leaders are not true evangelicals, leaving pastors like Dan Kimball and Bob Hyatt to choose between evangelicalism the ECM.  Personally, I have been disinvited from three speaking engagements this year, and one that I’ve got coming up in 2010 was moved off of a college campus and into a nearby hotel because of my presence at the event.

TSK notes that the conventional church in the UK and Europe has been more accepting of emergence in their midst, even supporting leading ECM thinkers like himself and Jonny Baker and underwriting emergingchurch.info.  Agreed.  From Rowan Williams on down, it seems that European church leaders are generally more comfortable with theological and ecclesiological innovation than their American brethren (although the protesters that have greeted Brian McLaren in Scotland and France and Germany show that European acceptance is not universal).

Interest in the ECM is peaking among mainline leaders in the States, if my speaking schedule is any indication.  I, for one, hope that this does not mean a lack of controversy — in fact, in one speaking engagement to which I just agreed, I’ll be speaking alongside Will Willimon, and we’ll be taking contrary positions on the benefit of denominati0ns.  That might lead to some controversy.

***

Lonne Frisbee

Last night I watched the documentary, Frisbee: The Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher.  Although the productions leaves something to be desired, the content of the film is both fascinating and harrowing.  In brief, Lonnie Frisbee was a gay, drugged out hippie who converted to Christianity during an acid trip.  As it turned out, he had a knack for preaching and healing, and he was pivotal in the genesis of both the Calvary Chapel and Vineyard Associations, and he was like a son to Chuck Smith, Sr. and then to John Wimber.  But as his sexuality became more public, they both turned on him.  When he died of AIDS in 1993, he had been ostracized by the churches that he helped found, and he was surrounded only by his longtime friends from the Jesus Movement.

I couldn’t help but be reminded of Max Weber’s definition that charisma is,

a certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These are such as are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader.

That’s Lonnie Frisbee in a nutshell.

More damning, however, is Weber’s conclusion that religious charisma is always routinized and bureaucratized as the generation that follows the charismatic leader attempts to capture the charisma and make a living from it.

And that is Calvary Chapel and the Vineyard.

If anything — and I think that TSK may agree with me on this — the question that looms over the ECM is whether it will become domesticated as the first generation of leadership passes the mantle to the second.  But, the truth is, the answer to that lies not with me or TSK, but with you.  Yes, you.

[UPDATE: It seems that TSK took my post to be more in-your-face than I meant it.  I really used a couple disagreements he and I have and used them as a jumping off point to reflect on movements in general, and the ECM and Calvary Chapel and Vineyard specifically.  My apologies to Andrew if this post seemed overly antagonistic.]

In case you haven’t heard, Google Wave is the latest innovation by the company upon which many of us rely for most of our day.  It’s meant to combine email, social networking, file sharing, wiki/nings, and instant messaging.  It’s still in “preview” stage — not even beta — and you can’t get on it without an invitation (which you can get if you find someone on Twitter giving them away).

I figured that a church would soon use Wave as an application for their life together, and, sure enough, I heard that Journey in Dallas used it last week.  So I interviewed two members of their collaborative sermon group — which they call “Teaching Team” — Danielle Shroyer (whose wonderful book you should give yourself for Christmas) and Dale Carter.

How have you been working on the sermons collectively at Journey to this point?

Danielle: Well we’ve always collaborated on Sunday night planning. In the beginning, it was Scott, Mueller, Mitchell and I who met at Starbucks. Over the years, it has become more and more open; that is, anyone in the community can come and be a part of Teaching Team, not just people in a leadership role. Usually we meet on Wednesday nights at Journey.

Dale: Teaching team really helps us in keeping our focus “community led” meaning we want people to feel they have input as opposed to one person leading a “sermon.” You could almost look at it as a group of people plan the sermon (and other elements) and whoever is speaking that night is just the presenter of the ideas of the community.

And what led you to experiment with Wave?

Danielle: We had comments from a number of people who wanted to come on Wednesdays but for one reason or another simply couldn’t make it — they had kids at home and couldn’t get/justify a sitter, they had another meeting or class beforehand and couldn’t logistically get from point A to point B in a timely manner. Other weeks we just noticed that people were tired and yet another night out seemed too difficult to swing.

We thought Google Wave might address all of these issues, as well as possibly bring in a broader spectrum of voices. If being part

Danielle Shroyer

of TT simply means logging into your computer from home for an hour, more people might be willing to give it a shot. If someone has class at 7:30, they can still log into the Wave and give their two cents at 8:30 for everyone to see. I suggested we try out Wave and see how it worked, and Dale suggested that if it did work, we could possibly move to a schedule of meeting in person the first week of the month and sketching out the next four weeks, and then doing weekly Wave Teaching Teams the following weeks. That’s what we’re planning on trying next month.

When we’re at Journey, we spend a significant amount of the time chatting, running smack and telling each other stories. Even though these may not be “productive,” they actually help us figure out how to come at a particular topic in a way that feels very organic to Journey. I was worried about possibly losing that in Wave, but since we all spend the day G-chatting with one another anyways, the witty sarcastic banter came along with us. (Case in point- last week Dale was running his smack by posting photos in the Wave and messing with font sizes.) I was actually surprised that Wave TT was not remotely different than usual.

Dale: It’s All business no joking

Danielle: It’s also great to have a physical representation of the conversation. Often we don’t take impeccable notes, and I’ll go home and try to write up something and get frustrated that I didn’t jot down that great question Z asked. Last week, I went back and read through the Wave a few times to reference things as I was typing everything up for Sunday

Dale: We found that like most small groups people were getting tired and it was hard to keep momentum of a live weekly group. We are just trying out the Wave idea and so far it is great. We still hope to meet once a month in person to keep those live connections.

How many people participated? Was there anyone who wanted to, but didn’t have a Wave account?

Danielle: It’s far less clunky, for one thing. The layout (even with the kinks they’re working on) is much better than a chat room, which can feel cluttered and less personal. Also, since much of our community runs on Google everything already- Google chat, Google docs, Google mail- it just makes sense to use Google Wave.

Dale: The best thing it has is how you can reply to any part of the wave. It’s not a linear conversation like a chat room would be. This way you can chat to the whole wave, but you can also go back and comment on an element earlier in the wave. This allows for thoughtful responses to purposeful questions or topics.

How did the sermon turn out?

Danielle: Well, you’ll have to ask them (!) but I think it went well! Of course, Teaching Team is not only about the sermon (which, during Advent, I actually do preach rather than lead a conversation like the majority of the time). One of the main things we do is plan the response. This week, we did a celebratory toast with water to the God who is the wellspring of salvation. So we spent a good deal of time last week trying to figure out how best to respond, and that’s where we landed.

Dale Carter

Dale: Everything turned out well on Sunday. I think we are even more excited about Wave Teaching Team after the first one. We feel like we figured out some things. For example we probably erred on the side of treating it like a group chat. We know now that it will help if the person speaking presents a few main ideas up front to the Wave. Then we can dialogue with those ideas when we meet live on the Wave adding other ideas.

Facsimilie of the Didache Titulous

The inimitable Carol Showalter, marketing guru at Paraclete Press, put this blog tour together, and she had the good sense to ask Jonathan Brink to ponder a special question: Is this text – The Didache – really so important? Why? Do we know that it was important to the earliest communities of Christians?

Jonathan answers that question in the affirmative, and in two parts.  First,

The Didache focuses on what it means to be a follower through action, as opposed to a stricter western focus of simply belief.  The emphasis is on love, which reveals life.

And second,

We can’t ignore a book that focuses on love, which also existed before any Christian theology is developed.  In other words, the absence of a Christian theology means its raw.  It’s the first exposure we have to what the early followers of Jesus were wrestling with.  And it just happened to be on the practice of love.  They didn’t seem to get bogged down into doctrinal issues…They focused on love. This has to inform the conversation.

Of course, I agree with Jonathan.  I think the Didache is going to catch on, in a big way, and especially with those of us who are scouting out new and primitive and “authentic” (overused, I know) ways to follow Jesus.  And, if you read the book you’ll see, the best way for us to do that is to really get inside the heads of the earliest Christians who put the Didache together.

Online Resources:

• Buy the book at Amazon for $10.11
• Buy 3 or more from Paraclete for 40% off (till December 11)
• Read our full translation of the Didache
• Listen to me read the Didache (17 minutes, mp3 file)

Previously: Adam, Thomas, and me on chapter one. Amy, Ted, and me on chapter three.  Holly, Tripp, and me on chapter four.  Mike and me on chapter five.  Brother Maynard and me on chapter six.  Mike, Greg, and me on chapter seven.  Luke and me on the epilogue.

Over at Subversive Influence, Brother Maynard has written a thorough and wonderful reflection on The Teaching of the Twelve: Believing and Practicing the Primitive Christianity of the Ancient Didache Community, the sixth chapter of which is, “Living Together in Community.”

The Didache has a lot to say about how a Christian community should get along.  In fact, it can be argued that the entire document is really a manual for church harmony.  Bro Maynard does a great job of walking us through the chapter, finding notes of agreement and even some of slight disagreement.

But what I found most interesting is his conclusion, in which he revisits his conversation with Frank Viola over the controversial book, Pagan Christianity,

Tony Jones calls the Didache “the most important book you’ve never heard of.” While I’m familiar with it myself, I concur with his assessment that most Christians today are not, and that it is an important work with which we should be grappling. In fact, the omission of any mention of the Didache was one of my major criticisms with Frank Viola’s Pagan Christianity, and my discussion of it actually centers on the very passages discussed in this chapter of Tony’s book. I gave Frank the opportunity to respond in an interview, and he did. You may note there the implied ascription of a second-century date for the Didache, but an early date makes it that much more important for Frank to have dealt with in his work, and this is in my mind what makes Pagan Christianity more of a popular than a scholarly work. (Note that Ben Witherington also goes to the Didache in his critique of Pagan Christianity.)

Bro Maynard then concludes with an endorsement that I could not be happier about:

One of the things I quite appreciated about Tony Jones’ treatment of the Didache was that despite a lack of footnotes or endnotes, the work itself remains scholarly-informed, but still manages to bring everything down to a practical level of daily practice. Indeed, the last word consistently goes to a guy named “Trucker Frank” — how much more down-to-earth can you get? Whether or not you’ve read or are a fan of Frank Viola’s Pagan Christianity, I can recommend Tony Jones’ treatment of the Didache in The Teaching of Twelve, and commend the subject matter as deeply valuable in our present social and ecclesiological milieu. (My $2.00 words for the day.) I would hope for myself to get my hands on a final printed copy of the book to replace my pdf galley copy, as it’s something I could see myself returning to.

Online Resources:

• Buy the book at Amazon for $10.11
• Buy 3 or more from Paraclete for 40% off (till December 11)
• Read our full translation of the Didache
• Listen to me read the Didache (17 minutes, mp3 file)

Previously: Adam, Thomas, and me on chapter one. Amy, Ted, and me on chapter three.  Holly, Tripp, and me on chapter four.  Mike and me on chapter five.

Some have asked in the comments whether the book is shipping.  It has shipped from the publisher to various distribution warehouses.  Amazon, for instance, is giving its release price, even though it has not yet arrived and been cataloged in its distributor’s warehouse.  But it will any day.  So, in other words, if you order one today (or have in the past week), it’ll be shipped to you within the next few days.  Thanks for your patience.

A wonderful post yesterday on The Teaching of the Twelve: Believing and Practicing the Primitive Christianity of the Ancient Didache Community, by Mike Todd at Waving or Drowning.  They’re tackling Chapter Five, “Sex, Money, and Other Means of Getting Along.”

The Didache speaks often of sex, and of money, and I spend some effort in this chapter of the book laying out the context of both in the ancient world.  In order to understand any ancient document, be it the Illiad, the Bible, or the Didache, we’ve got to attempt to understand the world in which it was written.  And the Didache was written in a world very unlike our own.

Mike picks up on that, writing about both sex and money in the ancient world.  For instance, in the first century, even on the outskirts of the Roman Empire, as the Didache community was, there was quite simply more sexual openness than there is in present-day Western cultures, if for no other reason than that there was far less privacy than there is today.  People didn’t live in their own, discrete homes with windows that shut.  If your neighbor died, you saw the dead body, if your neighbor gave birth, you heard the screams.  When you stepped outdoors, you had to step over your neighbor’s excrement.  And when your neighbors had sex, well, you knew that, too.

Mike concludes his post by writing about the primary concern of the Didache: our relationships with other human beings:

Tony wisely uses this chapter to emphasize the “horizontality” of the Didache. He points out that much of the New testament, while also concerned with life together, spends more time on humanity’s relationship with God, which is vertical in nature.

“But the Didache is concerned exclusively with the horizontal, with relationships between human beings, It lacks any overt theologizing about the nature of God or humanity or sin or righteousness—these seem to be understood as explicit.” (p. 86)

For instance, there is no mention of evangelism, at least in our modern meaning of the word. For me, this emphasis on the horizontal is the greatest value of the Didache to the contemporary church. In many ways our Christianity today is more verbal than lifestyle-oriented. Could it be that one of the reasons we feel the need to focus on the verbalization of the Gospel is because our lifestyles do not reflect it? To simply assent verbally to the Gospel allows us to remain comfortably entrenched in the status quo. Conversely to live out our lives in accordance with this Gospel would require us to live as an alternative to that status quo. It seems to me these two stances are antithetical.

Online Resources:

• Buy the book at Amazon for $10.11
• Buy 3 or more from Paraclete for 40% off (till December 11)
• Read our full translation of the Didache
• Listen to me read the Didache (17 minutes, mp3 file)

Previously: Adam, Thomas, and me on chapter one. Amy, Ted, and me on chapter three.  Holly, Tripp, and me on chapter four.

Yesterday, Holly Rankin Zaher and Tripp Fuller both weighed in on The Teaching of the Twelve: Believing and Practicing the Primitive Christianity of the Ancient Didache Community.  Their assignment was to reflect on Chapter Four, “There Are Two Ways.”

Holly is a committed youth pastor, and has been for years.  It’s from that perspective that she writes,

In my context of a youth ministry trying to live out the way of Jesus, I can’t help but wonder what our confirmation process look like if we used the Didache to shape at least part of the process. Might that help reshape the notion of confirmation and discipleship from ritual-driven to apprenticeship? Would a frank discussion on ethics and living life in a certain “way” help people understand a relational understanding of faith? Could it be that in discussing a way to life we might discover a deep vat a grace that Tony highlights?

Indeed, that’s exactly what what the Didache’s original purpose seems to be: as a catechetical manual.  It’d be interesting to know if any youth workers out there have used the Didache in confirmation classes.  If I were teaching confirmation today, I would use it.

Tripp, also a youth pastor as it so happens, comes at chapter four from his own ana-bapti-mergent perspective, writing,

The way of life, found in Torah and Jesus, is an insurgent’s way when the world is dominated by a political and cultural ordering of society that fails to value life and live in love.

He goes on to say that the Didache presents a contrary view of initiation into the Christian life than the “Romans Road” version that is often espoused by modern Christians.  And he’s right, the Didache’s way is one of orthopraxy.  As I quote Trucker Frank in Chapter Four, it’s “the heart of God on paper.”

Online Resources:

• Buy the book at Amazon for $10.11
• Buy 3 or more from Paraclete for 40% off (till December 11)
• Read our full translation of the Didache
• Listen to me read the Didache (17 minutes, mp3 file)

Previously: Adam, Thomas, and me on chapter one.  Amy, Ted, and me on chapter three.

Philotheos Bryennios who discovered the Didache in 1873

Today, Amy Moffit and Ted Gossard tackle chapter three of my new book, The Teaching of the Twelve: Believing and Practicing the Primitive Christianity of the Ancient Didache Community. (The blog tour skipped chapter two of the book, because that is the complete text of the Didache, which you can also find here.)

Amy writes that at first, the Didache seemed to her like a cut-and-paste job from Matthew’s Gospel, in which the authors simply took the parts of Matthew they liked and slapped them together.  It’s true that I think the Didache authors had access to Quelle, which was also the primary source of Matthew.  So she’s right to find parallels.

On a more existential level, Amy writes,

I’ve studied early Christian history, and I know that things have changed a lot, but reading about the Christians who would have been familiar with the Didache brings it home to me that their faith may well have been NOTHING like mine, not just in practice, but in substance as well.

She’s right about this, too, of course.  The Didache is quite shocking, especially for those of us who were fed lots of Paul and lots of John’s Gospel growing up.  And I know that for me, those were the staples of my youth group diet.  As I wrote yesterday, the Didache is much more Matthean and Jamesian than it is Pauline or Johanine.

Ted writes,

I found both the Didache and Tony’s take on it for both the past and the present fascinating. When one reads the Didache (which might be roughly as long as the book of Ecclesiastes) one encounters a number of Jesus’ sayings, and directions for the way of life as opposed to the way of death, as well as directions for Christian and church practice. It is not a dull read at all; in fact one will appreciate insights and want to ponder what is said.

And they both mention that it’s in chapter three that I introduce the readers to The Cymbrogi, a Christian community in rural Missouri that uses the Didache as a rule for their communal life.  Readers of my last book will recognize Trucker Frank as one of the Cymbrogi.  Their present-day embrace and application of the Didache really brings the ancient document to life for me.

Online Resources:

• Buy the book at Amazon for $10.11
• Buy 3 or more from Paraclete for 40% off (till December 11)
• Read our full translation of the Didache
• Listen to me read the Didache (17 minutes, mp3 file)

Previously: Adam, Thomas, and me on chapter one.

You may know that Doug and I started a company a couple years ago.  It grew out of our own desire to assist in the marketing of our own books, and we think that we’ve learned enough along the way that we’ve got something to offer others, as well.

One group that needs some marketing help these days is pastors and ministry leaders.  So we’ve developed a one-day Social Media Boot Camp for Pastors and Ministry Leaders.  We’re offering the first one next week in Minneapolis, but we’re also keen to take the Boot Camp on the road.  We can run it for church staffs, area pastor networks, and non-profit personnel.  If you’re interested, send us your request through the JoPa website.

Listen to the Boot Camp radio ad

Facsimilie of the Didache Titulous

Today, my new book, The Teaching of the Twelve: Believing and Practicing the Primitive Christianity of the Ancient Didache Community starts shipping (details for purchase are at the end of this post).  And Paraclete Press has been kind enough to arrange a blog tour over the next ten days.  I’ll be interacting with the posts by these bloggers as we go along.

Over at Pomomusings, Adam has written an overview of the first chapter and asked,

What was it like to live in a pre-Pauline time? How did followers of the Way of Jesus make sense of their faith and their call to live in a kingdom way before Paul? Perhaps the Didache is one of the documents that can help give us a sense of what that kind of faith-filled life might have looked like.

That, in fact, is one of my strongest points in the book: That the Didache gives us a glimpse of a pre-Pauline Christianity.  Some Didache scholars dispute this, but, try as I might, I can find no knowledge of Paul betrayed anywhere in the text of the Didache.  Many contemporary Christians struggle with Paul’s writings, and, while we don’t want to discard them, it’s nice to get another version of early Christian life that jibes more with James than Paul.

At Everyday Liturgy, Thomas Turner writes,

The Didache was written at a very early time in the faith when the canon hadn’t been set in stone, the Way of Jesus was illegal, subversive, and underground, and the orthodox theology of the Church was in its infancy. It was an exciting time when people were not really sure what exactly was happening but they knew full well that something had happened: Christ was alive and his Way was good.

As he notes a bit later, I surmise in the book that those first readers of the Didache were not only excited, they were likely very scared.  It’s hard for us to even imagine what following Jesus must have meant in those very early days of the faith, but, if the Didache is any indication, it consisted mainly of right living, gathering for meals, listening to visiting preachers and prophets, and sharing in baptisms and communion.

Thanks to Adam and Thomas for their posts.  Anyone else have any thoughts on the first chapter?

Online Resources:

• Buy the book at Amazon for $10.11
• Buy 3 or more from Paraclete for 40% off (till December 11)
• Read our full translation of the Didache
• Listen to me read the Didache (17 minutes, mp3 file)