Rhizone

Throwing (Down) Stones and Being Missional in Dallas

I had the rare opportunity this past week to sit in on a special, intensive one-day conference in Dallas titled "Voices of the Missional Movement" sponsored by Leadership Network.  If you're a megachurch pastor, I probably don't have to tell you what Leadership Network is.  It's like telling a computer geek why Redmond, Washington is a significant place.  But if you're not an "MP," it might need a little explanation.  Actually, what probably needs a bit more explaining is why it's so significant that Leadership Network sponsored such a conference to begin with.

Leadership network - we'll use shorthand here on and dub it LN - is without doubt the trend-spotter, trend-setter, and trend-supporter when it comes to everything that is new, powerful, and effective (even if it's not always pomo and "cool") in American evangelical Christianity.  LN, for example, launched the emergent church movement as an identifiable future force with an identifiable leadership at the beginning of the decade , even though the movement had a different name then and it did not end up what its sponsors had hoped it would do.  But if it weren't for LN, "emergent" probably would have never emerged.

Within the candles-and-sandals crowd LN has a somewhat ambivalent reputation.  They know it's got clout, let alone savvy, but there is also the feeling, which is probably not wholly justified, that when LN has hold of you you've somehow "sold out."  That's of course a paradox - in Derrideanese we'd call it an "aporia", or undecidable - of America's media-obsessed, reputation-driven, commercial-success-seeking culture, even among the wholly hip - notice I didn't say "holy hip."   Having a "press agent" and getting visibility and influence is what everyone strives for, and no one knocks it necessarily if they really get there, only perhaps if someone else does.   LN has a publishing arrangement with Jossey-Bass, and if you're part of their publication operation, you're sure to become well-known and well-regarded fast.

At any rate, by doing a conference with three well-known "missional" authors in the flesh to hear and talk with (with others who have just recently made their debut in attendance), I was really, really impressed.  Moreover, I was thinking, okay, next time I hear the smarmy muttering that LN only favors big churches with big money, I'll smile and say, "wrrrrong."

I rarely go away (or as we are asked to do, "take away") from a conference with such a sense of can-do-ness and encouragement about the American church changing as I did this week.  I've got all the books of LN's major missional players now - Reggie McNeal, Neal Cole, Milfred Minatrea, and Hugh Halter/Matt Smay. (the newcomer who in my estimation has the most powerful and relevant, if not the slickest, message of them all).  I'm really encouraged when LN, undetected even by this trend-sniffing hound dog here, decides to "go missional" with such a shock-and-awe display of confidence.

The one thing I did miss in all of them was a real consciousness that American missionality crucially depends on network linkups with global missionality (although Minatrea kept mentioning it without elaboration and my good buddy Hugh has had his own scales-falling-from-eyes experience, subsequent to writing his book with Matt Smay, in England, the Netherlands, and Lebanon this past summer).  But that step is not as hard to take as Frost and Hirsch's now well-honed characterization of passage from "attractional" to "incarnational."   In reading some of the earlier published books, I get the feeling at times that "incarnational" is still in the minds of the targeted audience, if not the authors, a way of saving your attractional church from becoming too self-absorbed or too-irrelevant.  Missionality and incarnationality is not like going to the gym regularly when you turn 40 in order to ensure that you don't get too fat, too fast.  It's more like deciding to go back to school and become a coach and physical trainer.  You have to "go all the way" in the good sense of the word, although I grant that use here of the old 1950s euphemism about what some people end up doing in the back seat of a car, after they've both convinced themselves they will get married in two years while remaining virgins and "only" necking, can be quite misleading, and perhaps not so appropriate.  However, I'm not condoning in any way, let alone winking at, setting up the temptation to pre-marital sex, but I do think some church planners - and perhaps even planters - ought to sit in the back seat of their own churches, where the people who come in late to avoid the greeters and having to fill out a guest card sit, might actually benefit from the experience.  That's where the first aha moment of missional Christianity in an attractional church environment can really occur.   

Going all the way could mean that church as we know it is on the way out.  At the conference two well-known speakers did say without mincing words that becoming missional can really mean making pastors as we know them "expendable."  They themselves were pastors, or pastor-trainers, who are at the same time major stakeholders in what one actually termed "the church industry."   Even Jeff Bezos, founder and tutelary genius of Amazon.com, would never talk about making bookstores "expendable." 

At LN you could say that.  Wow!  The church really must be changing.  But after all, when Jesus was asked by his disciples in Matthew 24 what would happen to the Jerusalem Temple, which they were awed by, he replied without batting an eye: "Every stone will be thrown down."

As I looked out the window at the downtown skyline of Dallas from my vantage point in the LN conference room on the ninth floor of a building right down the street from the beginning of Turtle Creek, where the wealthiest of the wealthy and the most powerful of the most powerful dwell,  I could only say to myself: "Well, if they can say something in this place like 'we're here to make ourselves expendable', they've got to be serious.

We'll see. 

But I am encouraged.

 

 

"Like a Rhizome Cowboy"

"Like a rhizome cowboy."  The phrase is Jonesy's, that is, Andrew Jones, you know, the tall, skinny, kiwi.  The name can be spoken in the tone of the James Bond's famous introduction of himself: "Jones.  Andrew Jones."  You get that kind of feeling when you see his blog picture.

Seriously, I've always admired Jonesy for not only his wit, his grit, and his fit - please be patient, I'm a failed poet - with my own take on things.  He is truly the Oprah of postmodern ministry (if you're not for Obama these days, I don't know if that's necessarily a good thing), and his down-in-the-peat-bogs wisdom about all things missional, Christian-trendy, and, yes, Biblical amazes me sometimes.  With respect to the history of what has come to be called "emergent" or postmodern in the new Christianity, he is genuinely the pomodomo of the movement. 

So I was thrilled when I completely, unexpectedly, and event-fully met him (after merely harboring a deep desire to do so since Mark Thames told me four years back "you've got to meet Andrew") one afternoon in Amsterdam in June.  I have a little secret to share with you.  The never-worry-about-closing-hours, living room missional salon of the Grafs of Christian Associates in Northeast Amsterdam, not far from the windmill, is where you can meet people you always try to meet but can't.  There's so much food and hospitality there - as well as poker games - that even somebody such as Andrew, who like myself is nomadic and evanescent, just might show up.  With no planning.  Andrew did!  Even if they go out of their way to hide from you, they can't.  The food, friendship, and the libations are just too good.  In Europe they understand that Jesus made "fishers of men" by partying.   

But I've been even more thrilled with what he has said about my new book GloboChrist on the web lately.  You can find it at length in the Sept. 1 posting of Andrew at the Church and Pomo blog.   Andrew says in his Aug. 11 posting it is "the book to read," particularly for Europeans.  As I've said in an earlier post July 5, I think Europeans are way ahead of us when it comes to being "missional."  I'm not sure, however, about the French.   

Andrew says he started talking about rhizomic Christianity years ago, which is indeed the case.  However, both of us got the idea from the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, who I'm sure never thought of it as a metaphor for how Christ would grow the Kingdom in the 21st century. 

The rhizome is a hot property right now, and not just in your flower bed.  I doubt, however, that Time magazine will make it the Person of the Year (do they have a category for famous flora?) in 2008.  But they might think twice.

I… wanna Rock n’ Roll all night and live RHIZOMICALLY everyday!

Carey Gable is a Southern Baptist minister in a small town in North Texas.  He can be reached by email.  He reflects here on how the rhizomic metaphor can be valuable for truly reading Scripture, not just planting churches.

Over the past few months, I have watched and listened as my six month old son has begun playing with sounds. He began with just a cry (at all hours), but then quickly moved to verbalizing (babbling) and I am expecting his first word any day now (proud Papa moment). As with all life changes, like have your first baby, it comes time to start asking some hard questions. With Titus attempting to speak, I became sparked to ask the hard question that Wittgenstein famously asked, “What is the meaning of a word?”

And more to the point, what is the meaning of The Word? Hebrews 4:12-13 says, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” (ESV) What can it mean and what implications are there if the Word is truly living, active, piercing, discerning, and omnipresent?

It means that the word in Hebrews is the same as the Word in John 1, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (ESV) And that Word sits now at the right hand of God the Father, making constant intercession for us. This Word moves, shapes, guides, interweaves into our lives. After all, the “Word of God is living and active.” This means that the Word is the power of salvation and discipleship. This Word is not a generic statement of a propositional truth that we must assent to in order to receive God. It is the very power of God, interweaving into this world.

Jesus told us the Parable of the Sower, and in it Jesus used the idea of the organic growth of the Kerygma as an example of how the good soil responds to the Word. The Word, the Kerygma, is the rhizome of faith. The power of the kerygma unto salvation is not a decision that rests in the minds or hearts of men, but in the spreading of the God-centered rhizome into the hearts of men. 

When we come to the scriptures, we should acknowledge three things: that scripture is revelatory, relational, and rhizomic.

God is the author and producer of all revelation. From Him comes all that we can and do know about Him. We can know nothing that He does not desire us to know. Yet, He still chooses to show us a glimpse of Himself in the scripture. This glimpse is the power of God revealing His presence to man, who is totally unworthy of this revelation. Yet there is something special about the scriptures that make them work, stick, and move in our lives. This something “other” in the scriptures is not a man made device, nor is it present because the scripture inherently have this “other” substance to them. The divine “other” is the revelation that God produces as we come to the scriptures and meet the face of God in His time and place.

The reason that we are allowed to glimpse God in this way is that God Himself desires relationship. So, therefore, we find that the scriptures call us to divine dialogue with our divine creator. After all, the Word is “living”, “piercing”, and “discerning.” God chooses to reveal the kerygma in the scriptures solely because He desires us to enter into relationship with our divine “other.”

And finally, the scriptures are rhizomic. When I talk about rhizomes, I always mention two things, 1. check out Gilles Delueze for more info, and 2. rhizomes are like Bermuda grass. Bermuda grass is fantastic in the Texas heat and direct sunlight, but it is nearly impossible to keep it out of your garden or flower-bed. That is because Bermuda grass “goes where it grows and grows where it goes” to quote Dr. Carl Raschke. The scriptures, under divine control, operate as a rhizome.

First of all, the construction of the Bible shows rhizomic evidence. That is why Genesis 1, John 1, and Hebrews 4 all line up to point us to the true nature of who and what the Word of God is. But also, it is incredible that we find Old Testament evidence played out in the New Testament. It is so much that the average person thinks that the Bible is one book constructed at one time. But, of course, it was not.

The most important part of the rhizomic nature of scripture is actually the way the words works in our lives. Because the Word empowers the word, the words matter in our lives. That is why we find that certain scriptures make more sense to us now than twenty years ago. It is also why we can go to the scriptures time and again and find new information and insights, even though we may have read the passage thousands of times.

Uniquely, the Word empowers the word to transform our lives even when only present in our mind. Practically, this means that it is important to memorize scripture. Spiritually, it means that when we face everyday life, we can be interwoven rhizomically to the Word of God by keeping the word of God in the forefront of our minds. So the words matter solely because the Word matters!