Which (Brethren) church to come?

The day brings...

(With apologies to Peter Blum for riffing on the title of his book...)

Stan Noffsinger, the top executive of my denomination, the Church of the Brethren, asked an interesting question on Facebook this week, and one that stimulated some interesting responses. He asked: "What is your vision for the Church of the Brethren in 2065?" and invited people to cast their visions.

On the one hand, it's kind of ridiculous to ask people to think that far ahead into the future. No one can do it. On the other hand, though, it's a good exercise at thinking creatively and imagining things as they could be down the road. So here's what I said:

A church that can educate and equip all its members to take more seriously its "priesthood of all believers" commitment. A radical commitment to place. A church that can say "No" to a world hellbent on speed, ease, self-seeking profit and pleasure, and violence - and "Yes" to the Prince of Peace and his way, truth, and life.

An institutional structure and processes that are adaptive, lightweight, networked, creative, nurturing, and representative.

Oh, and a way more global church with global representative governance. A church for the farm town, the city, the barrio, the plains, the savannahs, the deserts, the jungles, and to the ends of the earth in all its multi-splendored beauty.

Here's what was sitting behind some of my remarks...

Planting the Church of the Brethren in Toledo: A modest proposal

Photo by snowmentality (via Flickr)

This post is part of the NuDunkers conversation on church planting in the Church of the Brethren, on which we'll be hosting a live video chat this Friday, Dec. 6th, at 10am Eastern. Check out the event page on our G+ community page for more info on that.

I've been talking recently about how "seeking the peace of the farm town" has been my mantra for living and ministering in the rural communities of Tama & Toledo, Iowa, since moving here last year.

This phrase is an adaptation of the Lord's commandment in Jeremiah 29, addressed to the exiles in Babylon in the 6th century BCE. The command is to "seek the peace/welfare/shalom of the city to which I've sent you into exile." The exhortation is an echo of the creational mandate found all the way back in Genesis, to "be fruitful and multiply," and that in seeking the welfare of the pagan city (and empire) in which they found themselves, God's people would find their own welfare.

I fell in love with this text in seminary, wrote a paper on it, and posted it here a few years ago. It became a paradigm for me, helping shape my early thoughts about what my church ministry might look like after seminary. In particular, I've found the thematic metaphors of "building" and "planting" throughout both Jeremiah and Isaiah to be particularly, um, productive ones. So church planting and community peace-building have for years now been inseparable concepts in my theological reasoning, and practical mission/ministry planning. My aim has been toward forming worshipping communities with community peacebuilding teachings and practices wired in from the get-go.

Cultivation takes time and patience and risk - among other things - and planting is just one step in the cyclical process of life (and death). So when I discovered the Slow Church blog a year or two back, which takes its cues from agrarian-minded sustainability movements, I found another fruitful metaphor for church planting.

Most recently, I've written and submitted a church-planting proposal for my local community that takes cues from this "slow church" movement. As a bi-vocational minister (i.e. I have a day job that is not professional/paid "church ministry" in a congregation), I've committed to a small, open-ended, slow, patient, and discerning approach to church planting, with explicit nods toward community peacebuilding. It's been approved by the committee overseeing these things in my district and is on its way to the Northern Plains District Board for final approval at their meeting next month. I'll outline a few major points below, and embed the entire document at the end if anyone is interested in seeing how I approached this proposal...

Yeoman theology

Chaucer's Yeoman

After taking the summer off, the NuDunkers are having another chat this Thursday, from 9 to 10am Central, on the topic of "Dunker Theologizing: How we do our God talk." Check out that link for posts from others and details on how you can join the conversation, live or otherwise! This post is part of our prep for that conversation...

Two dear pastors/sisters in Christ addressed the following sentences to me; the first in my mid-20s, the second in my late:

"Brian, you'd love seminary!"
"Brian, when are you going to seminary?"

Here's another from a former pastor, upon seeing some of my undergraduate work (mid-to-late 20s), a class project where I interviewed pastors and the children of pastors:

"I know you'd love studying theology."

They were all right. I loved everything about my grad school/seminary years at EMU (except the exhaustion), and I excelled at the work of academic study. Mid-way through those studies I started hearing from peers and profs alike: "You could be a teacher," "you could do a PhD." It was intoxicating music to my ears.

Yet by the time I graduated, this intoxicating music began to take on ominous undertones in my hearing, and so I shook my head to clear out the siren song of the academy and instead moved with my family to rural Iowa to see what being an organic intellectual seeking the peace of the farm town might look like. (I'm still trying to figure that out...)

There are numerous reasons for my leaving academics when I did, but the one I want to explore here is what I take to be the Dunker-inculcated attitude toward theology/theologizing/"God talk" and its place in the body of Christ. It's an attitude that could be characterized as "yeoman theology."

MWR story on NuDunkers & MennoNerds

From our last hangout w/ David Fitch & Geoff Holsclaw

Kelli Yoder at the Mennonite World Review interviewed me a few weeks back on the NuDunkers, and has this nice article up today on the website (and in their upcoming print edition):

Hangout for 'MennoNerds': Online Anabaptist communities build faith, friendships, resources

As the title indicates, the story is also about the MennoNerds/Anabaptist Alliance that I've had some involvement with over the past few months. (This blog appears on the MennoNerds website.) The story offers a great account of the two distinct movements, where they came from and why, as well as our "symbiotic" relationship with each other, which as been great to see.

If the Anabaptist tradition is one that's marked by a thick sense of Christian community, these two movements are a great example of how we're trying to make that happen in online spaces, while simultaneously being cognizant of the limits of virtual communities. I'll quote myself here:

“Just because NuDunkers [and MennoNerds] is entirely social-media-based, this shouldn’t replace church for any of us... It should inspire and compel us into deeper engagement with those local manifestations of church.”

It seems that is actually happening, as the story reports one couple involved in MennoNerds is starting to think about planting a new local congregation! Great story, and my thanks go to Kelli Yoder for taking the time to conduct all the interviews and write it up, as well as all the folks involved in these two exciting, young, and emerging groups!

NuDunkers: Welcome to the conversation

So this "NuDunker" thing has been going on for almost seven months now; the first blog posts coming out in late October of last year. We've conducted, to date, three live discussions on G+ Hangouts (the one from last week w/ David Fitch & Geoff Holsclaw being viewable here on YouTube), and a raft of blog posts have accompanied each one. In the process we've picked up two more interested Brethren folks who want to be part of this - what we've insisted upon from the beginning - conversation.

In light of the passage of time, a few new faces, some other interested parties, as well as some confusion and misunderstandings, it seems like a good time to reflect on the experience so far, the process we've used, what tweaks can be made, and how to proceed from here.

This is going to be a long post, so before jumping in I'll just summarize a few points about NuDunkers:

• NuDunkers is, first of all, an ongoing conversation
• Its emerging structure: Open/public, social media-based, semi-monthly, topical
• The typical flow: A topic is identified, dates discussed for a live discussion, blog posts are up the week before, the live discussion happens, then follow-up posts are made - Wash, rinse, repeat
• Pitch and tone of conversation: Seminary-level and academic/theological, but with the intention of being welcoming to the whole church. Topics emerge from ministerial contexts, get discussed in this fashion, and hopefully inspire/enlighten/equip for practical ministry.
• You want in? We want this to be a centered-set kind of thing, allowing for various levels of commitment and participation; from voyeurs/lurkers all the way to welcoming more folks in the "circle of hosts" who plan and conduct the activities around various discussion topics.

I'll present the longer reflections in a kind of socratic way, with questions posed and some thoughts provided in response. I've vetted these reflections through e-mail discussion with the others who've been close to the center of this conversation: Andrew Hamilton, Dana Cassell, Joshua Brockway, Laura Stone, and Matt McKimmy. There will inevitably be some of my own "stuff" below, but I've tried to speak for the group as well (always tricky).

NuDunkers, Prodigal Christianity, and Charity

Tomorrow (Friday) at 11am Eastern, the NuDunkers are holding our third live chat on Google+ Hangouts. This is our first hangout with special guests, though, so we're excited! For that hour we'll be talking with evangelical neo-Anabaptists, David Fitch and Geoff Holsclaw, about their  new book, Prodigal Christianity: Ten Signposts into the Missional Future. See the event page for more details. (If you're unable to watch the live chat, no worries - it will be available on YouTube after the fact.)

As has been our developing custom, each of the NuDunkers prepared for this live event, each posting on our respective blogs beforehand. In this case, everyone read the book and posted on their blog. Well...everyone except me; I bowed out of the book read/posting for busy-ness reasons, but I'll be "there" tomorrow helping facilitate the event. And that's the joy of this being a shared endeavor, because I still experience the fruits of my fellow NuDunkers who engaged this exciting book. Here are their reflections on its various aspects:

• Dana Cassell/Authenticity: Prodigal Christianity (a NuDunker Review)
• Andy Hamilton/Hermes Table: NuDunkers and a Pilgrimage into Prodigality
• Josh Brockway/Collationes: The God Who Kneels
• Laura Stone/the Patchwork Pietist: Jesus is Lord! Therefore...

Brethren droning about drones?

Yes, this is a real toy Predator drone.
Read the customer reviews; you'll be glad you did.

A few weeks ago the Mission and Ministry board of the Church of the Brethren issued a resolution against drone warfare. It's on its way to the Annual Conference this summer, where it could potentially be adopted by the highest governing body of our denomination. Until this morning, I hadn't had a chance to read or think this resolution over, but I did so today in conversation with my NuDunker pals over e-mail and also with one of my pastoral mentors.

It's a good resolution, and I deeply resonate with much of what it's about. It makes appeals to Scripture as well as historical statements from the Brethren peace tradition, such statements themselves arising out of particular challenging issues of the past such as the draft in the days before conscientious objector status. It also makes some pretty strong calls upon "districts, congregations, and individual members"within the denomination to wrestle seriously with the issue.

As a pacifist, I've watched with a growing sense of dread at the development of this country's drone warfare program. It's one thing that totally demystified me about Obama in terms of his foreign policy vis-a-vis his predecessors. Drone warfare will soon begin to impact us more locally here in Iowa, as an Air National Guard base in Des Moines is transitioning from flying F-16 fighter jets to piloting drones (not completely unopposed). I have a friend and fellow Brethren who's worked on that base for years, so I'm trying to be pastoral first and foremost here. And yet...

Drone warfare should be deeply troubling for a number of reasons, some of which are illustrated in this excellent piece on what drones are doing to us, as a society:

• Increasing fear in communities (our own, as well as those we're dropping bombs on)
• Increasing impersonal engagements of conflict
• Avoiding the roots of conflicts
• Diminishing key virtues (namely: empathy, solidarity, courage, justice, nonviolent peacemaking)

These points, couched in virtue/human flourishing language, resonate with what I learned in a graduate peacebuilding program. So yes, this resolution is timely and important. But I have a few cautionary notes to strike...

Brethren Love Feast as sacred liturgy

My kinda countryside. Approaching Salem Mennonite, Freeman, S.D.

Last week I had the pleasure of spending Monday through Wednesday in Freeman, South Dakota, teaching and preaching at joint Holy Week evening services between four Mennonite congregations in the area, hosted at Salem Mennonite Church, where my friend Nicholas Detweiler-Stoddard is pastor. He and I worked together over the evenings to try and give an account of how worship works, relying heavily on the work of Christian philosopher James K.A. Smith and his "Cultural Liturgy" series.

To summarize, Smith's work is all about desires and loves, using ancient and contemporary wisdom to argue that we humans are worshipping animals who are what we love, and therefore worship what we love (in the churchy and non-churchy senses). The tasks for Christians, then, is to cultivate our loves toward faithful ends, namely love of God and neighbor (even enemies), and seeking first the peaceable kingdom of God. This happens by the enlistment of our imaginations, which is a whole-bodied enterprise. In volume 2 of his series, Imagining the Kingdom, Smith argues that "the way into the heart [and therefore the imagination] is through the body, and the way into the body is through story" (p. 14). Christian worship is the training ground to allow the "big story" of God's redemption of the world through Christ capture our imaginations, seep into our bones, train our loves/desires, and pull us toward a vision of the good life. Because of our sinful proclivity for self-deception, it's important that Christians also train our vision to see what other stories we've been enlisted into, and what false kingdoms we've been misdirected toward, because not everyone who confesses "Lord, Lord" with their lips and rational beliefs is a full-bodied Christian disciple. True evangelical faith takes practice, and the story-shaped, Spirit-filled practices of the church help cultivate faithfulness.

So on the final night of worship, the night before Maundy Thursday, I gave a narration of the Brethren Love Feast as I experienced it as a youth in Prairie City, Iowa, and made the argument that it is an example of a particularly "weighty" sacred liturgy, especially during Holy Week, and one that the wider church (and Brethren who have been letting it go by the wayside) should take up and appropriate. Rather than celebrate the full Love Feast in that service, we then moved into a time of washing the feet (or hands) of our sisters and brothers in Christ. In this area, these Mennonites have not commonly practiced feet washing, it was a beauty to behold children and parents, spouses, young people and elders, washing each others' feet and hands. Here's hoping a Love Feast might follow in time!

NuDunkers: A vision for Brethren theological education

(Moocow image by Gordon Lockhart;
remix of ‘la vaca de los sinvaca‘
by José Bogado/Flickr)

Last week the NuDunkers held our second live discussion on Google+ Hangouts, on the topic of pneumatology. Here's the video, and the event page has a transcript of questions and discussion items that were raised by folks watching the video discussion. Unfortunately, I missed the whole event because of an internet outage. But I still benefitted greatly from the pre-hangout blogging exercise and the follow-up remarks from our guest (new NuDunker?) - Laura Stone. I think we're off to a great start.

Simultaneously, in my professional world of educational technology, I was busy participating in, thinking about, and writing critically (and humorously) about the MOOC - massively open online courses - a phenomenon that has the higher ed world all up in a tizzy.

And as often happens for people who wear multiple hats, my worlds happily collided. I thought to myself:

Is NuDunkers a MOOC?

It's my contention that the NuDunker project is almost a MOOC in some senses, and with a bit of tweaking and explicit thought around digital pedagogy, it could be more so. And not only that, but NuDunkers could be a vision for Brethren theological education. Stay tuned as I unpack this a bit...

Of course!

From the beginning last fall, NuDunkers has been framed as a conversation. It has been, though, a certain kind of conversation - namely a theological and somewhat academic one, but with the intent of doing theology from and for the church. We want to use our brains faithfully for the concrete work of God (discipleship, ministry, mission) through God's concrete people (the body of Christ). So in this way there is an educational dimension to our conversations and their intended impact.

For the foreseeable future, we will be holding these blogging/discussing exercises around particular theological topics (last week: pneumatology). Given that these topical, educational discussions have time dimensions put on them, we start moving toward something that could be considered "a course" - that is, a particular group of people engaged for a particular period of time in the work of teaching and learning around a particular set of topics. I want to say that theological education is already happening in NuDunkers.

Open season

One important mark of a MOOC is that it is open. NuDunkers, from the start, has been intended to be open in a number of ways very similar, if not exactly like a MOOC. We're open with respect to...

• Cost - If you have a device with an internet connection, you're in. No registrar, no admissions, no tuition.
• Participation - You only have to have an interest in the work we're doing and a willingness to engage in respectful dialogue. You're not required to have a bachelors or associates degree, or even a high school diploma, and you don't have to be a professional pastor or seminary professor (in fact, that would probably help overall).
• Media - We're carrying this out in an array of online media and networks that are open to the world: YouTube, for everyone to watch the discussions; Twitter, for everyone to see tweet-sized bits of information; blogs, for everyone to read the more substantive writings and discussions. We're not locking this stuff behind university or seminary systems.

True, the language will be a bit academic, but again this is an educational endeavor, and we're trying to build a bridge here between the academy and the church. Negotiating the language games is going to be tricky at times, but we're convinced that risking those negotiations is both necessary and worthwhile.

All in for online?

U.S. institutions of higher education, including theological education, are in big trouble these days. The cost of college and grad school is, like health care in this country, spiraling out of control, while at the same time the plight of the professional pastor is looking increasingly grim.  Many schools are turning to online programs to bolster enrollments in their flagging institutions. But these programs often foster very little in the way of substantive engagement between students and instructors, and provide food for the head only, starving the rest of our bodies and our relationships.

While NuDunkers is being carried out entirely online, we're trying to do so in ways that engage more than just our intellects; we tell stories, we laugh, we pray. We also share an emphasis on the importance of local bodies of worship and discipleship (i.e. congregations) - so our work online should inspire and propel us deeper into local and more embodied forms of mission and ministry.

Questions going ahead

• For NuDunkers: How can we take our pedagogical vision further?
• For Brethren institutions: Are you interested in NuDunkers? What if you somehow got involved? What if you granted credit for participation in NuDunkers?
• For Brethren in the pews: How can we better engage you for the renewing of our minds in the body of Christ?

Tracking that elusive Spirit

"The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.
So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." (John 3:8; photo by byronv2/Flickr)

This Friday the NuDunker folks are hosting our second public conversation on the topic of pneumatology, which is the fancy seminary word for "talking about the Holy Spirit." You'll be able to watch the discussion live on YouTube and participate in live conversation over Twitter with the hashtag: #nudunker. If you've never done a Twitter live chat, let me know and I'll give you some direction there.

You can RSVP on Google+ if you're in that sandbox...
NuDunker discussion: Pneumatology
Friday, Feb. 8th 10am-11am CST

That event page will carry the live YouTube feed and we'll also use it in the days leading up to the discussion to post each of our preliminary blog posts. We'll also be posting those links on Twitter and Facebook all week (though Dana and I are fasting from Facebook this month, so you'll find us on our blogs, Twitter, or e-mail). If you can't make the live event, don't worry! It will be recorded on YouTube for posterity and (better) further discussion. It's our intention with these events to use social media to engage in good theologizing for the health whole church, Brethren or otherwise.

Okay, with that bit of business out of the way, the rest of my post consists of my thoughts around the Holy Spirit and how those thoughts relate to my ministerial calling, and how that messy journey has unfolded over the years...

NuDunkers, NuMedia

A few days ago, the first NuDunkers public video discussion came together on G+ Hangouts. Here's the hour-long video of the conversation, which basically covers how NuDunkers came together and what our hopes and prayers are for this project...

Andy, Dana, and Josh have all posted their reflections of the first meeting, so make sure to go check those out. The only bit I'll add to what they've already said has to do with our use of G+ Hangouts, our blogs, and the Twitter hashtag: #NuDunker.

Theological sketchings for NuDunkers

The joys of the arbitrary Google Image search...

The first order of business in this post is to answer the question...

What the heck is "NuDunkers?" - We don't know yet, but the more appropriate question is who are NuDunkers...

Okay, wise guy, who are NuDunkers? And who's this "we?" - "Dunker," for the uninitiated, is a throwback term to the Schwarzenaru Brethren practice of full-immersion baptism, and the word used to be somewhat of a group epithet used by outsiders looking in (like the word "Anabaptist" and even "Christian" in their original contexts).

So NuDunkers are, well...new. We self-described NuDunkers are very few at this point and are in our early stages of gathering. There are currently four of us - Andrew Hamilton, Dana Cassell, Joshua Brockway, and yours truly - all inhabitants of the Schwarzenau Brethren tradition in two of its current denominational forms: Church of the Brethren and Brethren Church.

For me, connection to these three fellow Dunkers began in the Brethren blogosphere. I first made connections with Josh nearly two years ago, and he's slowly worked me into conversations with Dana and Andrew over the past year. In recent months, in addition to our blog and Facebook conversations, we have had a few e-mail conversations and hangout sessions on Google+.

So it's safe to say at this early stage that NuDunkers is also a conversation.

What hath Kerouac to do with Mack?

Jack Kerouac

About ten years ago, in my early 20s, I read Jack Kerouac's On the Road, and it made a pretty big impression on me. The gestalt of the book really resonated, and it was a mostly gut-response. In the intervening decade, I haven't thought much about its impression on me, informally or academically.

But I think someone may have just done the hard work for me, expressing why I think Kerouac's work hit me like it did, and why it may have a continuing influence on my thinking. Over at the Englewood Review of Books, R. Dean Hudgens has an excellent review of the book, The Philosophy of the Beats, wherein he states that:

in [the Beats'] restlessness with the American Dream, their cynicism about mainstream society, their hunger for spontaneous expression, and the desire to be at home in their own bodies and with the bodies of others, there is a recurring call that many still find difficult to ignore. I don’t look to the Beats for all the answers, but I sure do find them giving voice to some of the most fascinating questions about embodiment, desire, imagination, poetics, vulnerability, and emotional intensity. These are not topics alien to Christian life but they are topics often foreign to Christian thought and reflection. (emphasis mine)

Three Brethren Desiring the Kingdom

A few months ago, Josh Brockway, my friend and fellow Brethren brother (and presenter at this week's #Occupy Empire conference!), fired up a new blog for the Brethren Life and Thought journal. Described as having "an Anabaptist and Radical Pietist voice," the blog is intended to bring scholarly discourse amongst folks in the Schwarzenau Brethren tradition into the digital age, something attempted in a few other places (including here) but with no institutional support.

Ever the tech nerd, I managed to wiggle my way into helping Josh administer the blog, but also contribute  to it. And just a few hours ago, Josh posted the final piece in a three-part/three-author series engaging James K.A. Smith's awesome book, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation.

1. Ascetic Christianity: Brethren Dress and Smith’s Cultural Liturgies by Joshua Brockway
2. In place of (non-)sacraments: Re-enchanting the Brethren by me, Brian R. Gumm
3. The Anabaptist’s Will, The Pietist’s Heart & The Lover’s Gaze by Scott Holland

It's been a lot of fun taking the work in this excellent book into conversation with two friends/brothers/colleagues with an eye on what its import may be to the Church of the Brethren today, and indeed I think there is plenty of import. My thanks to these guys!

BL&T: In place of (non-sacraments): Re-enchanting the Brethren

Over at the Brethren Life and Thought blog, I just posted my contribution to a three-part series of posts on James K.A. Smith's Desiring the Kingdom. Here's the link and the first bit of the post...

In place of (non-)sacraments: Re-enchanting the Brethren

While the Schwarzenau Brethren have long practiced the beautiful biblical-mimetic ritual we call “Love Feast,” there’s been the insistence that such practices – like baptism – are “ordinances” from Jesus. So we do them primarily because Jesus told us to, not because they have some “mystical” or “magical” power. Combined with a free church “priesthood of all believers” ecclesiology and liturgical practices, Vernard Eller could look at high church sacramental traditions in his book, In Place of Sacraments, and pejoratively describe them as “commissaries,” dispensing with mystical goods and services. Better than all that, Eller described the (surprise!) free church model which he called the “caravan” approach to practices like the Lord’s Supper and baptism. 

While honoring the good historical reasons that Anabaptists opted out of sacramental traditions (to their own peril, initially), appreciating much of Eller’s positive work in In Place of Sacraments, and being happy in our contemporary circumstances as a believers church tradition, still I wonder: Should we reconsider our bad attitude about the sacraments? In our desire to avoid magic-thinking, is there a way in which we’ve swung too far the other direction and depleted our social imagination as Anabaptists worshipping and serving a crucified and resurrected, therefore living, God? Have we thrown the genius of narrative-shaped ritual out with the sacramental bathwater? Read the rest...

Discerning Brethren social imaginaries

Thanks, Shady...
(Photo by PacificCoastNews.com)

Over at Hermes Table, Brethren pastor and professor, Andrew Hamilton, has a wonderfully provocative post: Will the Real Brethren Please Stand Up?

Inquiring as to the wide gaps in interpretive-theological approaches and ambivalence about the "peace stance" within the Church of the Brethren, Andy argues that:

[T]he distinctions are a result of diverse presuppositions which have emerged more out of...particular cultural contexts and their influences...[rather] than ones drawn from the multidimensional shaping effects of the divine metanarrative (God’s grand story) and its accompanying practices which announce the emerging kingdom of God within the present and future reality.

I think Andy's on to something important here for Brethren to pay attention to, and I don't think liberals or conservatives in the denomination are trained to think in the way he's suggesting. In my response to his post in the comments section, I tried to channel some James K.A. Smith and his work in Desiring the Kingdom, since that's on my reading plate at the moment.

From quietism to the blogosphere

Dirk Willems in the digital age?

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of conducting a break-out session at the 2011 Anabaptist Communicators Conference, which was hosted here at Eastern Mennonite University. The conference theme was "Anabaptism in a Visual Age" and my session was billed as follows...

From quietism to the blogosphere
Surveying Anabaptist online engagement

This session will survey the various forms of online discourse within contemporary Anabaptist traditions, particularly Mennonite and Church of the Brethren. Both scholarly and popular venues will be examined, with plenty of discussion time to explore the implications to traditional structures and processes for Anabaptist discourse.

A journey with biblical proportions

Couldn't find the Samson picture from this

My journey with Scripture began as a child growing up in my home congregation, the Prairie City Church of the Brethren (my hometown heroes). While my family was all happily Christian, my father was a pastor's kid, we did not practice the reading of Scripture in our home. This was left for Sunday at church. I don't have any specific memories with specific scriptures from my childhood but I do remember my children's Bible which had interesting pictures. I particularly remember a picture of blinded Samson, in the process of pushing apart the pillars that would in mere seconds kill him and all those Philistines. His gauged-out eyes continued to draw my seeing eyes back to his. Such willing self-sacrifice (revenge?) seemed heroic and puzzling to me.

The Brethren sexuality lexicon

A Wordle snapshot from "American attitudes toward gay marriage" on Carl Bowman's blog

Ah, denominational conference and assembly season is drawing nigh. I can tell because both my Brethren and Mennonite friends, colleagues, sisters and brothers (noted: usually brothers) in Christ are talking vigorously and publicly about sexuality. In the Brethren blogosphere there's been quite vigorous discussion going on in a number of posts on Brethren sociologist, Carl Bowman's blog, Brethren Cultural Landscape. One post in particular, "American attitudes toward gay marriage", has generated some wonderfully respectful comments from a range of perspectives. That it is respectful is good because that's not always the case as Brethren, indeed the wider church in the West, have navigated this issue.

But one thing about this discussion that has long troubled me is its linguistic dimensions. Indeed, the issue of language extends far beyond the conversation/deliberation about sexuality, but it's my jumping-off point for this post. From taking a look at the Wordle image above, which was constructed from all the comments in the aforementioned link (except my own, see below), it's clear to see the topics of discussion and the words being used, which (in my judgment) are fairly representative of the language I've heard used over the years when sexuality in the church has been discussed. The top three "weighty" words used are: Brethren, church, and progress. The first two are no-brainers but it's the third that I want to focus on to explore the broader issue of language.

Another new blogger: Paul Fike Stutzman and the Love Feast Blog

The book...now the blog!

Last fall I dropped a quick post about a new book by EMS alum and fellow Brethren minister, Paul Fike Stutzman (@paulstutzman). Recovering the Love Feast: Broadening Our Eucharistic Celebrations (Wipf & Stock, 2011) explores the Love Feast celebration from the Schwarzenau Brethren tradition (which includes the Church of the Brethren stream). Well, Paul has just started a new blog as "a place to learn about the Love Feast and share stories." Check it out!

The Love Feast Blog
Also, check out this story from EMU News:  Seminary Grad Book Champions Love Feast

I've become increasingly convinced that the Brethren Love Feast is a liturgical "diamond in the rough" from a tradition which typically describes itself as "non-sacramental." It is a practice that incorporates peacemaking into biblical, participatory worship. Like Paul, I am concerned that this practice has fallen by the wayside in many Brethren congregations and would like to see that trend reversed and the practice renewed, re-envisioned, and re-narrated for contemporary contexts. But I'd also love to see the Love Feast (yuk, yuk) be offered to other traditions as a gift for the whole church. Paul's book is a great contribution toward that end.