Eduardo Buck Schmidt :: Friends blog

George Barna and I just finished our fifth interview. It will be published soon. New Wineskins Mag. just published the report on the current move of God.

http://www.wineskins.org/filter.asp?SID=2&co_key=1618

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheForgottenWays/~3/471911048/

In order to really get to grips with the dynamics of these primal shifts (two posts ago) in community dynamics, I have found the anthropologist Victor Turner’s ideas of liminality and communitas particularly useful Victor Turner, The Ritual Process, Cornell University Press, 1969 ). Turner was an anthropologist who studied various rites of passage among African people-groups and came up with the term liminality to describe the transition process accompanying a fundamental change of state or social position. Situations of liminality in this context can be extreme, where the participant is cast out of the normal structures of life, is humbled, disoriented, and subjected to various rites of passage, which together constitute a form of test as to whether the participant will be allowed back into society and to transition to the next level in the prevailing social structure. Liminality therefore applies to that situation where people find themselves in an in-between, marginal state in relation to the surrounding society, a place that could involve significant danger and disorientation, but not necessarily so.

For example, in some tribes younger boys are kept under the care of the women until initiation age—around thirteen. At the appropriate time the men sneak into the female compound of the village at night and ‘kidnap’ the lads. The boys are blindfolded, then roughed up, and herded out of the village and taken into the bush. They are then circumcised then left to fend for themselves in the wild African bush for a period lasting up to six months. Once a month the elders of the tribe go to meet them to help debrief and mentor them. But on the whole they have to find both inner and outer resources to cope with the ordeal pretty much by themselves. During this time, the initiates move from being disoriented and individualistic to developing a bond of comradeship forged in the testing conditions of liminality. This sense of comradeship and communality that comes out of the shared ordeal Turner calls communitas. Communitas in his view happens in situations where individuals are driven to find each other through a common experience of ordeal, humbling, transition, and marginalization. It involves intense feelings of social togetherness and belonging brought about by having to rely on each other in order to survive. If the boys emerge from these experiences they are reintroduced into the tribe as men. They are thus accorded the full status of manhood—they are no longer considered boys.

So the related ideas of liminality and communitas describe the dynamics of the Christian community inspired to overcome their instincts to ‘huddle and cuddle’, and form themselves around a common mission that calls them onto a dangerous journey to unknown places. A mission which calls the church to shake off its collective securities and to plunge into the world of action where they will experience disorientation and marginalization but also where they encounter God and each other in a new way. Communitas is therefore always linked with the experience of liminality. It involves adventure and movement, and it describes that unique experience of togetherness that only really happens among a group of people inspired by the vision of a better world actually attempting to do something about it. (Remember the response to the tsunami.) And it is here where the safe, middle-class, consumerist, captivity of the church is so very problematic. And it is here where the adaptive challenge of the 21st Century could be God’s invitation to the church to rediscover itself as a missional communitas.

While some missiologists use this idea to describe the experience of transition the church in the West is currently experiencing in moving from one state (Christendom) or mode of church to another (missional), the emphasis has generally been on the new state of the church at the end of the process and so liminality and communitas are viewed as temporary experiences. From my perspective, significant manifestations of Apostolic Genius teach us that liminality and communitas are more the normative situation and condition of the pilgrim people of God. This is certainly the case for the phenomenal Jesus-movements in view; it is in the conditions of shared ordeal that these Jesus movements thrive and are driven to the activation of Apostolic Genius. What is clear is that both the Early Christian movements and the Chinese underground church experienced liminality through being outlawed and persecuted.

In this perspective, the phenomenal Jesus movements were/are expressions of communitas and not community as we normally conceive it. And as far as I can discern it is always a normative element of Apostolic Genius. The loss of communitas leads to a diminution of the total phenomenon of Apostolic Genius—the life force of the authentic Christian movement wherever it truly manifests.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheForgottenWays/~3/469815857/

I have been reading a book by the brilliant Catholic theologian and ethicist George Weigel called Faith, Reason, And The War Against Jihadism: A Call To Action. It just so happens that I was reading it as the Mumbai terror attacks happened and so I post the headings of his insights here. His issue is not with Islam in general, but with the particularly dangerous brand called Jihadism, and I do find these insights very honest, insightful, and confronting. I am inclined to agree. What think ye?

• Lesson one: The great human questions, including the great questions of public life, are ultimately theological


• Lesson two: To speak of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as the “three Abrahamic faiths,” the “three religions of the Book” or the “three monotheisms” obscures rather than illuminates. These familiar descriptions ought to be retired


• Lesson three: Jihadism is the enemy in the multi-front war that has been declared on us


• Lesson four: Jihadism has a complex intellectual history, the chief points of which must be grasped in order to understand the nature of the threat it poses to the west


• Lesson five: Jihadists read history and politics through the prism of distinctive theological convictions, not through the lens of western assumptions about the progress of dynamic of history


• Lesson six: It is not “Islamophobic” to note the historical connection between conquest and Muslim expansion, or between contemporary jihadism and terrorism. Truth-telling is the essential prerequisite to genuine interreligious dialogue, which can only be based on the claims of reason.


• Lesson seven: The war against jihadism is a contest for the human future that will endure for generations


• Lesson eight: Genuine realism in foreign policy takes wickedness seriously, yet avoids premature closure in it’s thinking about the possibilities of positive change in world politics


• Lesson nine: In the war against Jihadism, the political objective in the middle East and throughout the Islamic world is the evolution of responsible and responsive government, which will take different forms given different historical and cultural circumstances


• Lesson ten: in the war against global Jihadism, deterrence strategies unlikely to be effective, because it is almost impossible to deter those who are committed to their own martyrdom


• Lesson eleven: Cultural self-confidence is indispensable to victory in the long-term struggle against Jihadism


• Lesson twelve: Islamist salami tactics (also known as the salami-slice strategy, a divide and conquer process of threats and alliances used to overcome opposition) must be resisted, for small concessions in the name of a false idea of tolerance inevitably lead to further concessions, and into further erosions of liberty and security


• Lesson thirteen: We cannot, and will not, deserve victory (much less achieve it) if we continue to finance those who attack us, therefore, a program to defund jihadism by developing alternatives to petroleum based transportation fuels is a crucial component of the current struggle


• Lesson fourteen: Victory in the war against global jihadism requires a new domestic political coalition that is proof against the confusions caused by the Unhinged Left and the Unhinged Right


• Lesson fifteen: There is no escape from US leadership

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheForgottenWays/~3/468604424/

The explorations of communitas (the theme for the next series of posts around The Forgotten Ways) took on a very personal form in my own experience as leader of South Melbourne Restoration Community (now called RED), the church I had the privilege of leading for 15 years. When I look back to the early dynamics of that vibrant community, especially as it was still forming, we were functioning as missional church in a very naïve, pre-cognitive, and instinctual kind of way. All we did was set out to build a community that was radically open and engaged with all kinds of people on the edges and fringes of society. Things happened. It was exciting— the community was focused and sharpened by a sense of destiny and mission and as a result we grew in a strange and wonderful kind of way. We were missional, even though at the time this was as yet largely unarticulated, and as a result we experienced a remarkable form of community.

But something seemed to change as we grew and self-consciously became a more trendy, pomo, Gen-X church. For understandable reasons lots of grounded middleclass Christians from Melbourne’s Bible belt moved to the inner city to be part of what God was doing—and we welcomed the newfound stability in what was to that point a very chaotic experience of ecclesia. These were established Christians weren’t needy and that was a wonderful change for us and we basked in a period of sublime stability. But something shifted as we became more stable. And while we gained a lot from the participation of these wonderful people, nonetheless something significant was inadvertently lost as the church culture changed and became more middle-class and steady.

There is something about middle-class culture that seems to be contrary to authentic gospel values. And this is not a statement about middleclass people per se; I myself am from a very middleclass family, but rather to isolate some of the values and assumptions that that seem to just come along as part of the deal. In the chapter on discipleship we noted that much of what goes by the name middle class involves a preoccupation with safety and security developed mostly in pursuit of what seems to best for our children. And this is understandable as long as it does not become obsessive. But when these impulses of middle class culture fuse with consumerism, as they most often do, we can add the obsession with comfort and convenience to the list. And this is not a good mix. At least as far as the Gospel and missional church is concerned.

Operating under the influence of these ‘bugs’ in our middleclass software, our community became a marketer of particularly zesty religious goods and services vying for the attention of discerning spiritual consumers. Flattered by the numerical growth, and driven by our own middle-class agendas, we thoughtlessly followed the ‘gather and amuse’ impulse implicit in church growth theory and so we grew in numbers, but something primal and indispensable was lost in the bargain. We got more transfers from other churches, but the flow of conversion slowed down to a trickle and then ran completely dry. Paradoxically, we became busier than ever before, but with less and less real missional impact. We had moved from the missional idea of ‘me for the community and the community for the world’ to the more consumptive ‘the community for me’ and it just about destroyed us. We recovered only by recalibrating the community along fundamentally missional lines, and this was not achieved without pain and numerical loss. But in doing so, we moved from an experience of church as community to that of communitas.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheForgottenWays/~3/466746410/

I am about to start blogging on the whole idea of communitas as one of the key elements of Apostolic Genius (the latent power inherent in God’s people).  But I can’t get beyond a few quotes which I put at the top of the chapter.  I love them…here they are.

“That which does not kill you will make you stronger”

- Friedrich Nietzsche

“The ship is safest when it is in port. But that’s not what ships were made for”

-  Paulo Coehlo

“It is the unknown that defines our existence.  We are constantly seeking, not just for answers to our questions, but for new questions.  We are explorers…”

- Cmdr Ben Cisco, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

These seem to get at the heart of what this part of human experience is on about.  the whole idea of communitas focuses on putting the adventure back into the venture.

http://missionsmisunderstood.com/2008/11/24/myopic-missiology/

I think that churches, not parachurch organizations, should be doing missions. I believe that there is no substitute for the God-designed structure of pastoral leadership, ministry of the spiritual gifts, and the community of faith.

Some churches, though, just don’t get it.

We sometimes joke about the church-sponsored group that arrived for a week-long trip to Wales wearing bright orange “Save the Wales” t-shirts. It really happened, but this was not an isolated instance of myopic missiology. We’ve had puppet shows, choirs, mimes (in France, but of course!), badly-translated tracts, well-translated tracts, and bullhorns. Rarely are these methods prescribed by long-term workes with cultural insight. Rather, they are tolerated in hopes of fostering a partnership and broader involvement.

It used to be that a missionary had two choices- let the churches do whatever they want (usually what they think “worked” back home), or spell out every step of a short-term trip and babysit the group to insure compliance.

The good news is that now there’s another option. There is a growing number of willing participants who are not bound by tradition or convention and are capable of contextually-appropriate innovation in missions. They’re connecting  with people across cultures in meaningful and influential ways through art, business, and social action.

How do you find them? Start with a visit to the Upstream Collective.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheForgottenWays/~3/463606309/

OK, at last reJesus is now available in the US via Amazon, Christian Book Distributors, Barnes and Noble, etc.. I understand it will be available in non-US countries sometime in December-early January. Just thought I’d let you know. Its does feel like a birthing. I feel that this is a really radical book in the best sense of the word–it takes us back to our Radix/Root and connects us with our most primary impulses. Just don’t drop it–it explodes!!

BTW, you can download the introduction and the first chapter just under the icon on the right of this post >>>>