Archives For Fuller

MAGL Review

Chris —  May 18, 2011

My last two weeks were spent in Colorado Springs, Colorado at the campus of Fuller Colorado, an extension of Fuller Theological Seminary.  The time was spent participating in two courses as a part of my Master’s of Arts in Global Leadership.  The MAGL gathers students from Churches and Mission Agencies across denominations and around the world.  The degree plan focuses on leadership, adult education and organizational dynamics.  Because the degree is aimed at practitioners in the field it is made up of a unique combination of online classes and week long intensives.

Our first week was a class called “Character, Community and Leadership.”  The majority of the time was spent hearing the stories of our fellow cohort members.  Stories about growing up in Liberia, or Korea or France.  Stories about faithful parents that raised kids to be missionaries.  Stories about drug dealers that met Jesus.  Stories about moving across the world because of a sense of calling.  In light of our own journeys we discussed what makes or breaks a leader, and how to help people grow to look more like Jesus.

The second week was spent relearning how to read the Bible in a class titled “Biblical Foundations of Mission.”  We looked at the over arching story of how God interact with his creation.  We saw that he loves the nations of the world and the world itself.  We followed how Abraham and his children displayed God’s kingdom to their neighbors.  We studied Jesus fulfilled the role of Abraham’s children to be a blessing to all nations.  We delved into Paul’s message of how all people are reconciled to each other through Jesus.  We glimpsed God’s grand plan to renew all things in a fresh, grand garden.

As good as the classes were, any of us would tell you that the academics had very little to do with what they got out of our time together.  Our cohort is made up of people who believe that there is more to life than the American (or Korean, Liberian, Libyan or Canadian) dream.  It is made of people who live as aliens and strangers in this world.  We’re committed to the belief our neighbors, friends and communities would be better off if they knew about Jesus.  In many ways, it is made up of lonely people, who have followed a calling that has taken them far from home.

Perhaps the biggest take away was the sense of relief when you realize “I’m not crazy!”  There are people who are also passionately living out their faith in a way that leads them to the ends of the earth.  Now, we know who those people are, and we can pray for them by name.

 

I’m halfway through my first week of Character, Community and Leadership, the first on campus course for my Master’s of Arts of Global Leadership.  The class takes place in Colorado Springs, within walking distance of the Garden of the Gods.  The other members of my cohort are men and women from over a dozen countries on every continent.

This course is structured around a few principles.  One is that we must learn from our journeys.  The other is that adults learn the best when they are self directed.  Practically, this means that much of our first week is spent hearing each others stories.  These are amazing, since many of the participants are people who have experienced powerful callings.  They have given up much, and gained much in return.  They are also practitioners, with hands on experience living out the way of Christ in places like Liberia, Thailand, Florida and D.C.  We also spend a lot of time unpacking our experiences of reading various leadership and character related texts, my favorite being Willard’s Renovation of the Heart.

I have high hopes that big things are happening here, for all of us.  I would like to ask your prayers that this will be a watershed experience for me, where I will learn a lot about who I am, and what God has in mind for me.

 

The term “missional” has gotten so bogged down with baggage from previous movements that it’s hard to know what it means.  The story goes that Leslie Newbigin coined the term after returning to England from a lifetime of mission work in India.  The are a list off essential changes the Church must undergo from his essay “Can the West Be Converted.”  You can, and should read the full work at Newbigin.net. All edits/emphasis are mine.

1. Ditch the Professionals

“I would put first the declericalizing of theology so that it may become an enterprise…in that corner of the private sector which our culture labels “religion,” but rather in the public sector where God’s will as declared in Jesus Christ is either done or not done in the daily business of nations and societies, in the councils of governments, the boardrooms of trans-national corporations, the trade unions, the universities and the schools.”

2. We’re Banking on the Sky to Fall. “Second, I would place the recovery of that apocalyptic strand of the New Testament teaching without which Christian hope becomes merely hope for the survival of the individual and there is no hope for the world. The silencing of the apocalyptic notes of the Gospel is simply part of the privatization of religion by which modern culture has emasculated the biblical message.”

3.  Knowing Jesus Doesn’t Mean You Know Everything

“…I would put the need for a doctrine of freedom which rests not on the ideology of the Enlightenment but on the Gospel itself. The world will rightly distrust any claim by the Church to a voice in public affairs… But the freedom which the Enlightenment won rests upon an…illusion of autonomy – and it therefore ends in new forms of bondage. Yet we have no right to say this until we can show that we have learned our lesson: that we understand the difference between bearing witness to the truth and pretending to possess the truth

4. Kill the Denominations

“…I would affirm the need for a radical break with that form of Christianity which is called the denomination. Sociologists have rightly pointed out that the denomination (essentially a product of North American religious experience in the past two hundred years) is simply the institutional form of a privatized religion. The denomination is the outward and visible form of an inward and spiritual surrender to the ideology of our culture. Neither separately nor together can the denominations become the base for a genuinely missionary encounter with our culture.

5. Remember, Most the World’s Christians Live in the Southern Hemisphere

There will be the need to listen to the witness of Christians from other cultures. The great new asset which we have for our missionary task is the presence among us of communities of Christians nourished in the cultures of Asia, Africa, and the West Indies. We need their eyes to see our culture afresh.

6. We need more than the weapons of the world

But finally, and this is fundamental, there will be the need for courage. Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood but against the principalities and powers – realities to the existence of which our privatized culture has been blind. To ask, “Can the West be converted?” is to align ourselves with the Apostle when he speaks of “taking every thought captive to Christ,” and for that – as he tells us – we need more than the weapons of the world.

Related Posts/Links

Has the Missional Church Already Failed? (and the original article that inspired my own)
– A multipart review of Alan Hirsch’s Forgotten Ways

My Kinda Woman (Pt. 1)

Chris —  October 11, 2010

I recently began classes through Fuller Seminary on-line. I’ll be sharing some take-aways here.  Let’s start with two special ladies, Esther and Ruth.

Esther’s a hard book to deal with.  It’s notorious for getting into scripture without ever mentioning God.  The incessant winks and nudges to divine providence throw monkey wrenches at Arminians.  The high value of the power of an individual humans actions that could be hard for Calvinists to swallow.  It tells of how avoiding one genocide led to another war.  It mocks politicians.  It simultaneously provides fuel for radical feminists and subjectifies women.

Esther is my kind of woman.  She’s the prettiest girl in all the land.  She knows how to throw parties.  Most importantly, she makes tough decisions, even if they’ll cause her harm.

I’m a part of a generation incapable of decision making or commitment.  We’re transients.  We float from one city to another, one group of friends to another, one job to another, one shack-up to another.  We keep going back to grad school.  We’re so full from concerts, foodie restaurants, gadgets, and Facebook that we never dive deep.

Those of us still single in our late 20s and 30s, are in a tough spot.  We’re lonely and getting older, but our lives have become so full for a new relationship or to try to make a real difference in the world.

Esther has a pretty great life.  She got to go to a spa for a year.  She was surrounded by eunuchs, nice guy friends who could never put a move on her.  But when the opportunity came to make a difference in the world, she risked her life and she made a firm decision.  Her words “if I perish, I perish” are haunting to a generation who wants to make a difference, but won’t commit.

That’s why Esther’s my kind of woman.